Draco's Dangerous Dilemma
by Anise
Summary: All Ginny wants is to get the upper hand just once with drool-worthy hunk of man candy and callous playboy Draco Malfoy before he moves on to his next careless conquest...
1. Chapter 1

A/N: (sighs) Okay. This will be a long fic. And I know, I iknow/i, I KNOW what y'all are thinking, if you have read any of my fics from the beginning. They have a tendency to end up being tortuously plotted, unbelievably convoluted, endlessly endless, and very, very long. And I'm going to be honest, and say from the start that this one is LONG. But before anyone starts the come-to-Jesus talk and arranges the intervention (are you ready to admit that your life has become powerless over your addiction to D/G fanfic? Do you need to start and never then finish a certain number of fics? Do you lie about how many chapters each fic will be?) I will tell y'all this.

I did something with this fic that I have never EVER done before. I wrote most of the entire THING before posting ANY of it!

(everyone falls over and faints from shock. Or at least, I do!)

Now, this doesn't mean that ALL of it is completely done, so clearly it doesn't mean that nothing could change about this fic or that nothing could evolve, especially based on the readers' thoughts, inputs, and reviews. (Which is appropriate, considering that evolution is one of the fics' themes.) And some things undoubtedly will. However, it DOES mean that the evil rabid plot bunny of doom has been tamed and is now hopping around on the grass and delivering Easter eggs. :)

So, with no further ado...

As a final footnote to life's little joke, I remind readers that one prominent (or at least parochially beloved) mammalian lineage has a long and extensive history of conventional depiction as a ladder of progress—yet it lives today as the single surviving species of a formerly more copious bush. Look in the mirror, and don't be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority of prospects for extended survival.

-- Stephen Jay Gould, iFull House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin/i

The first time that Ginny Weasley ever saw Draco Malfoy sneering at Harry Potter outside Flourish and Blotts, she thought he was a horrid, spoilt, inbred, ferret-faced brat, and that anyone who hated Harry, the boy she loved with all her eleven-year-old heart, must clearly be a vile spawn of Satan. Or at least of Lucius Malfoy, which amounted to the same thing, considering the way that her father talked about him during all of her growing-up years. But she also thought that the twelve-year-old Draco looked at her just a ilittle/i too long. She would later think of that age as still belonging to her innocent childhood years, the years before the diary and Tom Riddle and the violation of her mind and spirit, and the slow, tortuous building of her mind and spirit from such a broken beginning. Draco Malfoy had been a child, too, right on the edge of an age when his hormones would push him towards girls for genders' sake, but still lingering at the precipice, not quite yet crossed over all the way into adolescence. Even so, his crystal-gray eyes lingered on her freckled face and curly red-gold hair as if he were seeking the answer to a riddle he had just been asked, or the lock that matched a key he had been holding during all of his young life.

On the other hand, his contemptuous sneers and insults were exactly as they should be. He was a Malfoy and she was a Weasley, and the two pureblood families had loathed each other past all sense and sensibility since long before the Norman invasion had occurred in 1066, or the Angles and the Saxons had stepped on British shores, or the Druids had watched the sun rise on Stonehenge, or Avalon had sunk beneath the sea. Probably since before the first fish had crawled out of the ocean, actually. So Ithat/i was all right.

Ginny watched Draco Malfoy far more than she herself ever realized when they were at Hogwarts together. He turned thirteen, and then fourteen, and then fifteen years old. There were times when she had to admit, in the darkest, deepest, most unacknowledged part of her mind, that he was growing up into a handsome boy. iIf/i you liked the albino, inbred, ferret-faced, scrawny brat look, she always added to herself. Even a tall, blond ferret with enormous gray eyes and a beautifully chiseled face. Personally, she liked the noble, tragic, green-eyed-as-a-speckled toad heroic look. Even a hero named Harry Potter who was ignoring her, and who had actually called her "Janey" once and "Joaney" twice during her fourth year alone. But Draco was always superior and arrogant, cold and disdainful, and sometimes even uncaring and cruel. She took a vicious pleasure in setting Bat-Bogeys on him at the end of their fifth year, and she proudly reported to Harry that he was running away from them in Umbridge's office whilst screaming for dear life only because of iher./i

And all of this made perfect sense.

But then she could pinpoint the start of when things began to spiral apart, when the center no longer strictly held, and when nothing related to Draco made the slightest bit of sense anymore. Of course, this could only happen if she was going to be strictly truthful with herself on the subject of Draco Malfoy, which she very rarely was.

The first time that she saw Draco Malfoy after his sixteenth birthday was on the Hogwarts Express while she was walking back to a car full of Gryffindors with her Pygmy Puff on her shoulder, and she thought that he gave her the strangest look she had ever seen. It was as if he iexpected/i her to turn and look at him—which never would have happened in the first place-- and then really isee/i something in him, something of who and what he was beneath his cold surface, when there had never been any reason that she should. Or to recognize something different in him than she had ever had any chance or reason to see. Ginny did feel a sharp pang of pity, which she quickly repressed, because he was, after all Draco Malfoy, the spawn of ultimate evil, and she'd already heard a number of dark whispers between Ron, Harry, and Hermione on the theme of their theories about what he'd supposedly been up to that summer. But he looked so ithin/i. Molly Weasley would have immediately tried to feed him gallons of Dr. Mopsey's Magical Milkshakes (Guaranteed to Put On 1 Kg Per Cup!) And he was dressed all in black, and he looked so pale, and his grey eyes didn't seem to see anything around him… well, except for iher./i He did seem to see her. He kept seeing her all year.

And there it was, the beginning of everything that didn't make sense about Draco Malfoy.

When he was dragged into Slugworth's Christmas party by a leering, triumphant Filch, his eyes flickered immediately to Ginny where she was standing by the door. She turned to look at him, as if he had pulled her by a string. She never knew why. He turned his head violently away from her and down, his eyes filled with shame. "Don't you dare ilook/i at me like that, Weasley," he'd spat at her under his breath, but his voice sounded as if he were about to cry. She saw him in the deserted corridor, hours afterwards. She laid a tentative hand on his arm. He froze, and he gave her the same look he had on the train, except that now she saw more clearly than ever that she simply couldn't decipher what it meant. Then he turned and walked away from her as fast as he could.

Ginny figured out that year that he slipped into the Room of Requirement alone, just as she did. The difference was that she thought his reason was the same as hers, which was to throw off the stifling normal self that everyone else expected her to flawlessly portray, just for a little while. She didn't know the real reason until it was too late. Ginny spent a lot of time trying to convince herself that this was why she'd come so perilously close to kissing him two nights before he let Death Eaters into the school. She was lingering by the unicorn tapestry, trying to decide whether or not she wanted to go in, and she heard the sound of sobbing. She knew it was his. When she went in, she found Draco crying over a dead bird cupped in his hands. She stroked his hair and his face and his wet cheeks, and he sank down to his knees and laid his head on her breast, and when he looked up at her, she leaned down and came within a hair's breadth of kissing him. Simple as that.

Except that it wasn't simple at all, because Draco was the one who pulled back from iher/i, not the other way around, and his eyes were filled with what looked like horror.

"M—Ginny?" he said numbly.

She couldn't look him in the eye, and she ran out of the room. She'd come so iclose/i. She'd nearly kissed iDraco Malfoy/i, and if ihe/i hadn't stopped the kiss, she would have done it. And who could say what else might have happened, after that? That near-kiss made her feel like a complete stranger to herself. It was the reason why she kissed Harry Potter in the Room of Requirement only a few hours later, in almost exactly the same spot where she had almost kissed Draco. She had convinced herself that she had loved Harry since she had first known who he was, and so she was the Girl Who Loved Harry. If she could remind herself of why she loved him so much, then she would know herself fully again. But it didn't work at all.

Ginny stole up to the infirmary and stood by Draco's cot in the middle of the night. She watched him for a long time while he was sleeping, although she was sure that he never knew it. He might have been one of her brothers lying there, a lost, silvery-haired brother; yes, that was it, she was sure of it. She felt so very sorry for him, after all. It was why she had tried to protect him when nobody else had so much as lifted a finger. Hermione and Ron hadn't approved of what Harry had been done, Ginny knew that. But they had sat around with him in a silent circle and stared at the walls of the Gryffindor common room after Harry had nearly killed Draco Malfoy with a spell from the Half-Blood Prince's potions book, and only Ginny had finally said, "You've got to get rid of it." She had taken Harry to the Room of Requirement and had put the book someplace where she knew he'd never find it, because ishe/i knew that otherwise Harry might be tempted again, and Draco Malfoy might never be safe. Nobody, inobody/i else had spoken for up for Draco, or tried to protect him, or even punished Harry for what he'd done. Ginny had a slow, creeping, frightening knowledge that it was wrong, desperately wrong. She couldn't think about it too much, or an awful anger towards Harry might begin to grow deep in her heart. And this simply couldn't be allowed to happen.

Ginny pressed a chaste kiss to Draco's forehead in his hospital cot before she even quite realized that she was doing it, but she was sure that he never felt it. A sister's kiss, she tried and tried to convince herself, but she couldn't quite manage it. One of his hands twitched above the coverlet, as if reaching out for something or someone who wasn't there. No-one was there except for Ginny herself. He was all alone, this lost, wounded, deserted boy, and his face was so beautiful in the stark moonlight flooding in through the window that Ginny didn't think she could bear to look at him. She was never sure why, but she leaned forward and laid a hand along the side of his cheek.

He stirred a little in his drugged sleep, and she froze.

"M.. ma.." he began to say in a slurred voice.

iIs he calling for his mother?/I Ginny wondered. It was impossible to imagine anyone ever addressing the elegant Narcissa Malfoy as "mama", though. She listened for several minutes more, but that was all Draco said, and then she heard a rustling noise and grew afraid that Madame Pomfrey might be coming back with a potion or something. She did inot/i want to be caught at Draco Malfoy's bedside! So she crept back to the Gryffindor girls' dormitory, although it took her quite some time to fall asleep. She dreamed that she had lain down in the narrow hospital cot and pressed herself to him and that he had clasped her in his arms, and that made no sense at all. The rest of the dream made her blush just to remember it, and had required a long, not-very-satisfying session with her fingers between her legs under the covers, hoping that the Silencing charms around her bedcurtains held.

The next night, of course, everyone learned what Draco Malfoy had really been doing in the Room of Requirement all year long. Ginny could hate him then, and she convinced herself that the hatred would be pure and clean.

On the night after the last battle, over a year later, her family was staying in one of the ramshackle guest bedrooms in a spare tower at Hogwarts. Ginny couldn't sleep, and she wandered the dusty halls for awhile. She saw Draco with a sinking sense of inevitability. He stood at the end of the corridor, the moonlight shining off his silvery hair, his face in shadow.

"Oh, fuck, what do iyou/i want?"she asked.

"I don't know," he said. He walked towards her until his face was brightly illuminated by the moon, too.

"I don't want to talk to you," she said.

"I'm sure you don't," he said.

"I want you to get away from me," she said.

"M—" He bit his lip. "Ginny…" he said. He raised a hand to the side of her face, and she stood motionless. She could feel the warmth of his skin coming towards her. If he touched her, she knew that she would be drawn into something sweet and terrible, something she could not resist. And she wasn't sure if she even wanted to.

The sleeve of his robe fell back. The twisted, ugly mark on his left wrist was exposed. In a flash, her mind raced through connections. The Dark Mark of the Death Eaters. Fred had died because of them… because of the people who wore this… because of Voldemort, who had given it to all of them… and Draco had knelt before that filthy thing and taken the mark into his flesh.

She watched her hand reach out and slap his face, hard.

He flinched back. Then he turned, and was gone.

Now, ithat/i part made sense. He was a Slytherin and a Death Eater and a Malfoy, and he was on the losing side. She was a Gryffindor and all of her family was in the Order and she was a Weasley, and she was on the winning side. And she had slapped him. But nothing that led up that action made the least bit of sense.

For the next two years or so, Draco Malfoy had simply dropped out of her life, which made all the sense in the world. She heard scraps of news about the Malfoys from time to time, always bundled up with the doings of the other Death Eaters. This one had gone to Azkaban. That one had done away with themselves, using a Suicide hex. The other one had moved their entire family to the Northwest Territories, never to be heard from again. About six months after the end of the war, she heard that Lucius Malfoy had died. Her first reaction was a vindictive gladness. She despised the man, as she should. And it wasn't only because the fact that he had slipped her Tom Riddle's diary and landed her in the Chamber of Secrets; it was as if there was something more, something she couldn't name, something about him that seemed more personal and that made her feel positively ill whenever she even thought of him.

"I hope iall/i of the Death Eaters are getting ready to die out," she'd said to her mother when they both read the news in the iDaily Prophet/i, and Molly Weasley had nodded grimly.

"I doubt they can adapt to the wizarding world we have now," said Molly. "At least, I hope they can't. Either way, they ought to be exterminated."

Her mother had become so hard, thought Ginny. So cold, sometimes. A chill went through her. It was right that her mother should have changed, though; of course it was. She tried to convince herself of this. But then she thought of Draco's pale, gaunt face when he raised a hand to the side of her face in the corridor, and she didn't know what she felt anymore at the thought of him losing his father, and it didn't make sense anymore. So she didn't think about it anymore.

Then everything sped up, as if a switch had been flipped that threw her suddenly into frenetically normal life.

Ginny sometimes thought that those years of her life, the Hogwarts years that led up to the war and then spanned it from age eleven to almost sixteen, contained so much drama that there simply wasn't any left over for the years that followed. There was hard work, delightful friendships, wonderfully normal fun, deliciously productive and rewarding work success. Ginny developed her artistic talents and got a good, entry-level job at a graphic design firm, she lived in Muggle London, and she had many friends. Her life was rich and satisfying… for the most part. One problem was that she also craved a dizzying and multiorgasmic sex life. But something always seemed to be getting in the way. She came to realize that a no-sex curse (which put her mother's stern warnings about white dresses on her wedding day to shame) clearly haunted her attempts to happily (or even unhappily) embark upon the sea of sensual delight. It seemed to develop a depressingly successful mind of its own and to orchestrate a series of curious events which apparently conspired to keep Ginny a perpetual virgin. It took her a long time to realize that Draco Malfoy seemed to be peripherally involved in all of them, and that it was only in these contexts that she started seeing him again after the last battle at Hogwarts, randomly and infrequently.

First, of course, there was Harry Potter. There was, as it seemed there had always been, Harry Potter. He was the original Chosen One, but that title didn't refer only to his status as the savior of the wizarding world. He was also Ginny Weasley's eternal, first, pure, excessively soppy One True Love, which naturally involved a melodramatic vow on her part to save herself for their wedding night, when she would at last slide into his sanctified arms in a white-canopied bed covered by nargle-infested orange blossoms. This had seemed like a perfect plan when she was eleven years old. By the time she was fourteen and snogging Michael Corner, however, or fifteen and allowing Dean Thomas's hand to sneak further and further under her robes before rather regretfully removing his fingers from the swell of her left breast, Ginny began to realize that she had a high natural sex drive and likely wasn't going to make it to the wedding. However, the Somewhat Revised Plan for One True Love still involved the two of them only wanting each other, and only satisfying their sacred carnal desires with each other.

Ginny did a great deal of fidgeting around in her narrow single bed at night during her sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts, and she spent a certain amount of time every week in learning more effective Silencing charms and hoping that they were really doing the trick when it came to containing her moans at three in the morning. (She istill/i thought that some of the Gryffindor girls tended to giggle behind their hands when they saw her during the daytime.) The really embarrassing part was that the images of Harry were never, ever enough to push her over the edge into one of her acceptable and yet never very exciting self-induced orgasms. And she idefinitely/i didn't want to think about the times when she'd wake up from dreams about a boy with silvery hair and gray eyes reaching out to touch her face in a moonlit hallway. Drowsy, still half-asleep, she would stroke herself to a much more satisfying climax then, and pretend that the entire episode had been a dream in the morning. It was particularly embarrassing when this happened the time that she'd slept over at Harry's flat at the end of her seventh year. Even though she was primly dozing on the couch in the living room because of uneasy qualms about her mother's ability to find out where she'd gone and track her down, she was still afraid that Harry could hear her moaning, well, isomeone's/i name. And that it hadn't been his.

After Ginny graduated Hogwarts, she decided that waiting any longer to consummate One True Love- type matters with Harry was simply ridiculous. She was eighteen years old, for Valhalla's sake! And seeing as how she'd been feeling distinctly sensual stirrings since her thirteenth birthday or so—or at least, that was the time when she'd found a stray issue of iPlaywizard/i that Fred and George had left lying about the house, with an article about male masturbation techniques, and had wondered if any of these could be adapted to girls, with moderately successful results—Ginny figured that the time had more than come, so to speak. She and Harry set up a date to meet at his London flat, which he had all to himself (Ginny was sharing hers with Luna Lovegood, who was extremely curious about everything and might have wanted to take notes. She asked Colin Creevey, because she thought he'd be on vacation on Fire Island all that week and he had a very nice flat, but he told her she'd got the dates wrong so that was right out. Ginny made a mental note to try yet again to find Colin a nice girlfriend. He was such a lovely friend and shopping partner, made Ginny chicken soup whenever she was ill, and was always helpful when seeking advice on hairstyles.)

But then everything seemed to go wrong right from the beginning.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers, especially: Thank you for the love!

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

--Jane Austen

The central property of life is the capacity and necessity to build, maintain and preserve itself.

--Steven Rose, Lifelines: Life Beyond the Gene.

When Ginny was in the lift headed up to the fifth floor of Harry's flat, she glanced at her watch. "You're twenty-four hours early for your sexual appointment, dear," it chided her. "Don't you think that you really ought to go home and return tomorrow?" Absently, she turned off the alarm, because arriving one entire day early seemed natural enough. She didn't ring the doorbell, but let herself in, because the door was open, and that was nothing to wonder about either. It made perfect sense that she would tiptoe through the front room, rather than making her presence known, and slowly open the bedroom door just a crack.

When she saw Harry Potter groaning in loud pleasure as the skinny blond-haired skank who lived down the hall knelt in front of him on the bed and did something that Ginny really didn't want to think about to his exceptionally small penis, however, nothing made a great deal of sense anymore.

Ginny was fairly sure that there had been some shrieking after that, most of it coming from the skank after she tore a large chunk of her hair out and then threw her out the door. The rest came from Harry after she punched him. He does scream like a little girl, she thought. She walked sedately out into the hall, which was thankfully skank-free.

I'm not upset at all, she thought. I don't feel a thing. I don't care. Her eyes were perfectly dry. She wished that she could cry, but it was as if all of her tears for Harry Potter had already been shed long, long ago. She could barely even remember them now. She had been buried by an avalanche, or swept away in a raging flood, or trampled by a herd of rabid nundus. One didn't cry over a real catastrophe. It was too vast for that, too overwhelming. The strangest thought came to her, though. Had it really been a catastrophe at all? Or was it only the end of a gradual process, a set of changes so slow that she could see their creeping imperceptible pace only by looking back on them? When was the last time she could really say that she had loved Harry, without the words seeming to dissolve into dry, meaningless dust even as she tried to speak them in her own mind?

Her head still felt a bit fuzzy. She shook it several times as she got out into the street. Ugh. I feel like I've been under some sort of Confundus charm. Well, that would explain arriving a day early, anyway. However, she still felt nothing but a sort of cold, echoing emptiness over the abrupt schism between herself and Harry Potter. Apparently, she mused, the Eternal, First, Pure, Excessively Soppy One True Love hadn't been enough to overcome… what was that phrase Colin always used? Oh, yes. The Amazing Micro-Penis. (Ginny had never been exactly sure whose micro-penis Colin might be referring to, or why, although it did seem to be just a generic sort of description that might apply to anyone. Perhaps when she got round to finding him a nice new girlfriend, he wouldn't spend so much time thinking about such odd things.)

Of course, one could always throw into the bargain Harry's utter obtuseness, complete lack of respect for her feelings, and slack-jawed stupidity, she supposed. Her less than charitable evaluation might, just might, be colored by whatever it was that she surely must be feeling beneath all this numbness, she thought, but… well, then again, it might not. Either way, she wanted a coffee. No, needed a coffee. In fact, a great deal of coffee just might be necessary, were her life to continue at all.

Ginny's face was deep into a sextuple cherry-flavored espresso at Madame Lonelyheart's Coffee Lounge when she first saw him.

He was leaning up against a wall, and she was sitting in one of the big comfortable moss-green velvety chairs pulled up next to a Grecian-revival style fireplace. After toying with Pride and Prejudice and Flobberworms, She'd been flipping through a copy of Scientific Wizardry Weekly: (Quantum Time Travel: It's Not Just for Bad Muggle Sci-Fi Anymore!), then looking absently round the room, and her eye had been caught by something very bright. Light glinted off the thing, turning it into cold silvery fire. What on earth was it? The bright thing turned, and then it turned into Draco Malfoy's head. Naturally, it came attached to the rest of him. She stared.

It was the first time she'd seen him since that night after the last battle of Hogwarts, about two years before. He looked almost exactly the same, and yet he was so completely different that she could only recognize him by running over a list of physical attributes: that freakishly silver hair, enormous gray eyes, narrow, sculpted face, pink lips, the bottom one much fuller than the top, tall lanky frame, big hands and feet. These were all of the things that should describe a person, weren't they? But they didn't describe Draco Malfoy, because he looked the same, but he wasn't the same. She just didn't know how, and she certainly didn't know why. The last time she'd seen him, he looked as if he was about to off himself, quite frankly, and the death of his father couldn't have made him any cheerier. She wouldn't have been surprised to see him lurking about Diagon Alley hexing small children, or holding a razor to his throat with a doomed, tragic aura and big spooky eyes, or something. So how could he be leaning against a wall next to a newspaper stand filled with copies of the Daily Prophet in a sort of casually elegant slouch, chatting away on a pink Muggle cell phone? He was sort of looking in her direction, but he didn't seem to see her. Would he acknowledge her if he did? She wondered. Did she want him to? Did what she wanted even matter, one way or the other? She craned her ears. Did he just say something about tennis? There's nothing particularly tragic about tennis…

He snapped the phone shut and glanced up, and smiled pleasantly. He did see her! Ginny thought seriously about just leaping up and running out of the coffee shop, but it was much too late. He moved towards her gracefully and quickly, like a dancer, and he was in the other chair before she could say Death Eater.

"Weasley," he said charmingly. "How nice to see you."

"Uh," she said. She was in shock. On the other hand, she now had a very good chance to examine the new, shiny version of Draco Malfoy at close hand. The dark, doomed aura was gone. The terrible sadness that had weighed down every inch of him during his sixth year at Hogwarts and the last time she'd seen him, the night of the last battle, looked as if it had lifted and disappeared, as utterly as if it had never existed. He'd traded in all that gloomy, funereal black for elegant, stylish Muggle clothing in light colors, beautifully cut. He'd put on just a bit of weight (in all the right places, her unruly mind noted), so that he was sinewy and slender rather than gaunt.

"Ah, ah," Draco said playfully, tapping the lid of her cup. "Really, Weasley? A sextuple espresso? You'll be up all night, you know."

"Um," said Ginny, fumbling for words. Was there a twinkle in Draco Malfoy's eye? Had the world gone completely mad? Was she in the middle of some strange sort of nightmare? Maybe she'd never actually gone to Harry's flat at all. Maybe the consummation devoutly to be wished was still to come, and maybe she'd find out that she really didn't need to whip out her wand and perform a Magnification hex in order to see the necessary equipment on Harry's part… Remembering the sight of said equipment less than an hour before, she grimaced.

Draco took the lid off her cup and peered into it. "What a face, Weasley. But then, those can be a little bitter. Perhaps they didn't put quite enough cherry flavoring in."

"Give that back!" Ginny said indignantly. He sounded exactly like he was making fun of her. It was as if he knew… but he couldn't possibly know. She grabbed the cup and felt the warm touch of his fingers. She pulled her own hand back as fast as she could, and sucked in her breath as she felt lukewarm coffee splash all over her skirt.

Draco idly examined his formerly blue trousers. "Sweet Merlin, Weasley, but you're as clumsy as ever, aren't you?"

"I—I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—" She got up, scraping her chair back ungracefully. "Malfoy, just send me the bill and I'll be glad to—"

He waved it away. "Oh, don't bother. The salary of a junior graphic designer at Sans and Serif, after all…"

Her mouth fell open. How had he known where she worked? "Uh—aren't you going to say something nasty about poverty-stricken Weasleys?"

Draco raised one dark-blond eyebrow. "Really, Weasley, we're long out of school now. Lovely to see you again, but I'm afraid I have to rush." His smile remained pleasant and light. He seemed like someone who took all of life lightly now, as if it had become an amusing joke, and to show any particular emotion over it would be very bad form indeed. When she thought of all the tragic aspects she'd imbued him with during his sixth year at Hogwarts, she blushed.

"Well. Um—goodbye—" she began, haltingly. But he had already turned to go, striding jauntily out the door. Several women turned to watch him. Ginny was sure she heard a few wistful female sighs. Actually, at least one was male. She scowled.

"I'll bet all of you could catch up with Malfoy, if you hurry," she muttered under her breath, and was less than amused to see more than one person scamper off in his direction as if chased by wild kneazles in heat.

On a Saturday afternoon some months later, Ginny was about to sit down for lunch at Madame Concetta's Cozy Coffee Shoppe and Lunch Counter when she saw the copy of The Daily Prophet on the table. Draco Malfoy looked up at her from page three. Can the Malfoy Heir Clear his Family Name? Opinion Piece by Rita Skeeter. Ginny snorted. There was just no getting rid of that woman, apparently. Few Death Eaters have managed to fully shake off the lingering stink of He-Who-Can-Now-Be-Named, But Really, We'd Prefer Not To. Can Draco Malfoy do the trick? His case is scheduled to come up before the Wizengamot in December, and the skinny on the street is that it isn't a particularly good one. But spreading enough ready cash about to all and sundry who can whisper an encouraging word for him into the court's ear can only help, and his heartless-hottie good looks certainly can't hurt (photographs of the delicious Draco at this year's Pureblood Regency Ball on pg. 32A, the alluring Astoria Greengrass on his arm.) His refusal of this author for an interview with the curt words "bugger off", on the other hand--

Ginny swept the paper onto the floor. It was, of course, purely a coincidence that it fell open to page 32A. Both Draco and Astoria wore Muggle costumes, which surprised her, although she supposed that it really shouldn't. The Pureblood ball had had some sort of odd historical theme for as long as anybody could remember, after all. Astoria Greengrass looked anything but alluring, in Ginny's far-from-humble opinion. She haughtily looked down her nose, wearing a hooped fragile gauze pink dress decorated with flowers and ribbons that hardly seemed like it could have been worn more than once, because one good smack from behind (which Ginny would have been more than happy to provide) would have squashed the froths of tulle and pleated gauze trims in a heartbeat. And if the entire rigmarole was supposed to emphasize her virginal innocence, it came along several years too late, she uncharitably thought. Malfoy, though… He looked out at the camera with exactly the sort of cool arrogance she would have expected. Sort of how-dare-you-take-my-picture, you plebian, combined with oh-very-well, I'll deign to display my image to the unworthy masses, just this once, you understand.

And as much as she hated to admit it, he was something worth looking at, but what annoyed her so very much was that she could barely see any of him. Almost everything except his face was hidden behind that overdressed Greengrass slag. Ginny was fairly sure she saw a high, stiff collar over a beautifully tied silver ascot, and a big hand in a formal white glove around Astoria's waist (and only that one, she thought, probably cost more than she spent on groceries for a month.) Perhaps there was a bit of one of his legs behind that hideous pink dress. She could swear she saw his thigh muscles flexing in flawlessly cut and undoubtedly evil trousers--

"What are you doing? I wanted to read that Daily Prophet," said Colin. "Where's my horoscope? I think you tore it in half."

Ginny jumped guiltily. "I know what mine is," she muttered. "I'm about to go stark raving mad and end up in St. Mungo's if I hear one more word about Draco Malfoy."

"Oh, really?" Colin raised his eyebrows and sat down. "Where did you hear the first word?"

"Nowhere," said Ginny. She picked up the paper and smoothed it out. "He hasn't changed since Hogwarts, has he?" It was the first thing she could think of to say.

"He's filled out in all the right places," said Colin.

This was so similar to what Ginny herself had been thinking that she blushed instantly. When Colin broke into a knowing smile, she wanted to smack him.

"He's still an arrogant berk," said Ginny. "Probably obsessed with pureblood purity; why else would he have been at that horrid Pureblood Ball with that awful Astoria Greengrass?"

"The Pureblood Ball's starting up again?" Colin asked incredulously.

"Apparently so."

"I always wondered exactly what that was like. Zabini told me a bit about it a few times."

"Vile," Ginny said primly.

"Really? Do tell."

"No. I'm not going to tell you about anything the Committee for the Preservation of Purebloods gets up to, because you don't want to know." Actually, Ginny was fully aware that she probably didn't know any more about the inner workings of the Pureblood Regency Ball than Colin himself did, for all that he was a Muggle. Few events could have been less welcome topics of discussion in the Weasley household. "And we weren't talking about that. We were talking about Draco Malfoy."

"I thought you didn't want to talk about Draco Malfoy," Colin pointed out slyly.

"I'll bet anything he'll secretly always be a Death Eater at heart," said Ginny, ignoring him. "I don't care if he does play tennis now. Death Eaters could play tennis, couldn't they?"

"Mm. My amazing psychic powers are telling me that you've seen Draco yourself since Hogwarts. And not just in the Daily Prophet, either. Where exactly did you see him, Ginny? Was he fully dressed at the time? Where exactly has he filled out?"

Why was Colin so interested in things like that, she wondered. She really did have to work on that finding-a-nice-girlfriend project for him.

"Fine," she snapped. "I'll tell you, and then you'll shut up. I ran into him a few months ago at Madame Lonelyheart's Coffee Lounge. That's all."

"I see. And you kept it to yourself!" Colin looked almost indignant. "And now I suppose you expect me to dish every intimate detail I know."

"No, I don't. I want to eat lunch."

"Oh, yes, you do. I don't know very many anyway, so I'll probably be done by the time you get to dessert. One." Colin ticked off the not-really-so-very-intimate details about Draco on his fingers. "He's doing everything he can to clear the Malfoy name, all right, but the main thing is that he's trying to get the Malfoy fortune released by the Wizengamot."

"As if you need to tell me he'd make that his top priority in life." Ginny bit viciously into her corned beef sandwich, as if it had done her a personal injury.

"Two. Now, this one's really interesting. Almost six months after the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy just dropped out of sight."

"That was around the time when his father died, wasn't it?" asked Ginny.

Colin nodded.

'What did Lucius Malfoy die of? I never heard."

"There are things in this world I don't want to know, and that's one of them." Colin shuddered. "But nobody else knows, either. Anyway, about a year and a half later, Malfoy reappeared in the wizarding world."

"That was pretty much exactly when Harry… when Harry and I… " Ginny said quietly. She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to. Colin laid his hand over hers. She had sobbed in his arms through more than one sleepless night about Harry.

"Anyway, Malfoy just hasn't seemed the same ever since. From what I hear, he's quite a bit more… cheerful these days, shall we say? Playing tennis, dressing in pastels, not murdering puppies, and all that. And three… well… three does kind of go with two…"

"What?" Ginny stabbed a fork into her pasta salad.

Colin cleared his throat. "I've heard that he's become a callous playboy who litters the landscape with his cast-off girlfriends," he said rather awkwardly.

"You don't have to warn me off him, Colly," said Ginny. "If every other wizard on the face of the earth was hexed into a toad, I'd turn to bestiality before going after Draco Malfoy."

"You know what I like about you, Ginny? Your shy, girlish modesty. But you really have to learn how to say what you think. Stop holding back." Colin wound spaghetti round and round a spoon. "So you'd never go after Malfoy, huh?"

"Never," Ginny said firmly. "Nundus don't change their spots, Colly. He's still the same person underneath; he's got to be. Arrogant and spoiled and sneaky and cruel, and that pureblood slag Greengrass clinging onto him like a barnacle on a boat… oh, he hasn't really changed one little bit, I'll bet you anything."

A gust of wind rushed in from the open door, and the copy of the Daily Prophet she'd thrown on the floor blew about her feet like a particularly irritating cat that wouldn't go away until it was fed. Ginny made a cluck of annoyance and picked it up again; all of the pages were fanning out, and it was a mess. It fell open to the Rita Skeeter opinion piece. There was another photo of Draco Malfoy on the facing page, one she hadn't seen before. He was coming out of the Ministry. The caption said that he'd just testified in front of the Wizengamot, and that they'd been in session for several days running, hearing his case. He looked grim and tired and drawn, more like the younger Draco of the Hogwarts days that Ginny remembered so well, and he gave the photographer his this-airspace-reserved-for-non-lepers glare that she had seen all too often from the teenaged Draco.

As she looked at his wizarding photograph, his left arm went up to shield his face from the camera lens. It must have been a very windy day. The sleeve of his robe was blown back completely and quickly. For a flash of time that seemed to last forever, Ginny saw the dark, twisted thing that marred this left wrist, the emblem of the choice he'd made that would forever scar his flesh. He had reached up to her with that hand on the night of the last battle at Hogwarts as she stood motionless in the corridor and he was turned all to silver in the moonlight, except for the black slashes of the Dark Mark, which no light could ever illuminate. Revulsion had risen in her, and she had slapped him. She had the same horrible desire to hurt him now.

Nundus don't change their spots.

She reached down and crumpled the paper into a ball, throwing it savagely into a wastepaper can.

"I just need to concentrate more on my art, Colly," she said. "Sometimes I think it's the only thing that matters."

"Have you ever heard of a little thing called sublimation?" asked Colin, digging into his cheesecake.

"No," Ginny said firmly, even though she had certainly read Freud.


	3. Chapter 3

8

For those who have read Jane Austen's _Persuasion_, it's set in the same town of Lyme Regis as Ginny and Draco's adventures at the Malfoy cottage. This is also the setting of John Fowles's _The French Lieutenant's Woman._

The best-laid schemes of mice and men oft go awry.

Robert Burns, To A Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, with the Plough, 1785.

The young people were all wild to see Lyme.

Jane Austen, Persuasion.

Ginny began sculpting in clay, and spent many hours bending over a potter's wheel or pouring slip into her own molds before firing them in a new and very expensive kiln. She was still astonished that she'd managed to get hold of that kiln, which had seemed like such an unattainable artistic dream for her. Ron had sheepishly said that he could scrape up enough to manage about a one percent down payment for an early birthday present, and Ginny knew better than to ask her parents to foot the bill. She had gone to Gringott's because of their ad in the Daily Prophet ('All Loan Applications Duly Considered!'), (and un-creditworthy candidates disposed of by dragons, she'd sourly thought.) It was strange that the copy had been shoved under the door of her flat when she didn't have a subscription, but Luna explained that this was a frequent guerilla marketing move on the part of the Whooping Hoopterns, and Ginny had decided to simply not ask any more questions. On the whole, her main motivation had actually been to dissuade herself, thoroughly and permanently, from any such mad idea as laying out cash for a kiln when she and Luna had been down to eating peanut butter and beans in twenty-four different creative ways five times in the past month alone.

But the goblins at Gringott's had approved her loan. She'd stared incredulously at Mr. Crumblygrotts for almost a full minute after he'd told her.

"But I don't know when I'll be able to pay it back," she finally said.

"No problem that is," he said, industriously stamping her paperwork.

Ginny actually cleaned out one of her ears with a Kleenex after hearing that.

"Isn't this the part where you inform me that if I'm ever more than twenty-four hours late with a payment, you'll have the Hellhound of Cerberus at my door, accompanied by a census-taker?" she asked.

"Not necessary that will be," said the goblin. Stamp. Stamp. Stamp.

"What about the part where I have to pledge my immortal soul to Satan, Bel'ial, Asherah, Amnit, or at least an Inland Revenue Service Agent if I default on the loan?"

"Waived that provision is." Stampity-stamp!

"Wait—wait a minute—" Ginny tried to peer at that particular page. She was sure she'd seen a name on the co-signer line. Something in elegant backhanded writing…

The page flipped. The goblin smiled. This sight was as unattractive as it was unusual. Ginny's suspicions flared up even higher. Goblins did not smile. Not normally, anyway. Only one thing pleased them, and that thing was money—going in, that is, not coming out. Something strange was definitely going on.

"Mr. Crumblygrotts, was there a co-signer on this loan?" she asked.

"Confidential much information is," said the goblin. He rose to his feet, although it took Ginny a minute to figure out that he had actually done it. "For doing business with us, Miss Weasley, thanked you are."

She was ushered out of Gringott's and into the street before she even realized exactly what had happened, blinking in the sunshine. The folded copy of the contract in her hand felt heavy. She shook it, and a large, ornately carved, brass key fell out. An address was written on the label, close enough to reach with a short walk. With a dreamlike sense of unreality, she went to find a small building squeezed between its neighbors, its elegant Georgian architectural lines pleasant to her artist's eyes. The key opened the door to a large studio, and the kiln was already installed in one corner.

Ginny decided that the better part of valor was to just not look a gift horse in the mouth, in this particular case.

Ginny spent long hours in the new studio, placed many pieces, and even started to sell them. She went to pick up materials at a new supplier and found Michael Corner loading plaster into a lorry. She was both surprised and pleased to see him, and he was very glad to see her. They began dating again, and they enjoyed each other's company. They snogged and fumbled about a bit, and Ginny found the experience satisfactory. She couldn't pretend to be wildly in lust with Michael, much less in love, but the echoing emptiness in some part of her interior since all things romantic had so abruptly ended with Harry had never filled.

She started a few letters to Harry that she never finished, because there was nothing to say, really, and she crumpled them up and threw them away. He sent one owl to her that she returned. She realized belatedly how strange it was that she didn't even care enough about what he'd written to read the letter before furiously tearing it up. She didn't know if she could feel fury over anything that Harry Potter did or didn't do, ever again. There seemed to be nothing left but cold numbness. After several months, she realized that she couldn't remember the last time she had really even thought about him. Her lack of feeling frightened her. Perhaps, she thought, she really wasn't capable of feeling anything, ever again. Perhaps she had only used Harry in order to fool herself into believing that she had any emotional depth.

She couldn't stop dreaming about Madame Lonelyheart's Coffee Lounge and cherry-flavored sextuple espressos and the light glinting off of a head of silvery hair before it turned into a twisted dark thing that chased her down a shadowy corridor, and she became increasingly irritable and edgy. She decided that it was because she just needed to finally start having sex. Her nineteenth birthday had come and gone, which was a perfectly ridiculous marker to pass while still in a state of sexual inexperience, in her opinion. Allowing her first boyfriend to finish what they'd sort-of-but-not-really started when she was fourteen years old seemed like an appropriate closing of the circle. True, Michael had never really been much more than a placeholder for Harry, and she felt rather bad about that, but she consoled herself with the fact that he was, after all, about to receive the consolation prize. (Actually, she would have preferred that Neville Longbottom had been available for the breaking-in experience—he'd provided her very first kiss, and they'd always been such good friends. But he was seriously dating Hannah Abbott now, and anyway, as she sometimes thought in the darkest and loneliest part of the night, Neville deserved a girl who had something in her heart to offer him.)

Michael had told her that he had some cousins who had a timeshare, or something, in a lovely little holiday cottage down in Lyme Regis, on Lyme Bay on the English Channel coast. Ginny had been able to take a long weekend free from work. The idea was that she'd drive Luna's borrowed car there to meet him (since it was over a hundred miles distant, it was a bit far to Apparate and still be sure of getting there with all her bits intact, which seemed especially important for this visit), and then they would enjoy a romantic weekend. Well, a sex-filled weekend, anyway. They could also stroll along the Cobb, take an educational fossil walk, visit the settings mentioned in Persuasion (Ginny had read a great deal of Jane Austen,) or simply relax on the bedroom balcony and enjoy the breathtaking views of the coast, or at least that was what the brochure said. If they needed a short break from all the sex, there was pony trekking, deep sea fishing, and the scenic Lyme bay with the possibility of seeing, feeding, and petting a local version of the Loch Ness monster, plus good restaurants, conga festivals, golf, and Circe only knew what else. But mainly, Ginny hoped, there would be plenty of sex that would range from breathtakingly magnificent to at least pleasantly satisfactory. Packing a suitcase into the boot of the little Fiat she'd borrowed from Luna on Friday, she frowned. Maybe she should have questioned Michael about delicate matters of penile length before planning this particular vacation.

Everything was going very well indeed until the car broke down in the middle of nowhere.

Ginny stared disbelievingly at the hunk of stupidly obstinate metal. The tires were all fully inflated, the tank was full of gas, none of the "check engine" lights were on, she'd run a complete magical diagnostic; it just didn't make any sense at all… and she was long overdue to meet Michael, who was sitting in the cabin, undoubtedly drumming his fingers, and wondering when the hell she was planning on showing up for the promised weekend of sexual escapades. Her cell phone had gone dead, too. And not a single car had passed for three hours on this appalling nightmare hellhole of a so-called road!

Also, it was very dark by now, and the moon cast eerie shadows on the fields surrounding her. Too-whit. Too-whoo. Was that an owl? Not the helpful kind that was going to carry a message, either, Ginny would be willing to bet. It was a decidedly creepy situation, and although Ginny was a Gryffindor through and through, she had also watched a wide selection of Hollywood slasher films on Arthur Weasley's illegal VCR in her parents' shed through many of the wee hours on her holidays home from Hogwarts.

A hand tapped her on the shoulder.

"Gah!" She jumped several feet in the air, whipping out her wand, scrambling round.

A wizened little old man with a face like a dried apple smiled beatifically back at her, a pipe clamped in his near-toothless mouth.

"Gah." He nodded amiably, as if returning a friendly greeting.

"Who are you?" she demanded, not lowering her wand a fraction of an inch.

"'Ee should know. Oh aye, 'ee should remember old Tom," he said, shifting the pipe in his mouth.

"I've never seen you before in my life."

"Yes, yes 'ee have. I'll tell 'ee summat—" The gnomelike little man reached forward and touched a red curl of her hair with a gnarled hand. "'Ee don't look the same, but old Tom remembers, so he does. Old Tom don't forget, an' all." One stiff, gnarled finger brushed her face.

"Do that again and I'll hex you into a toad—Tom, or whoever you are!"

Tom cackled softly. "I wuzzen' allowed to tell 'ee, an 'ee can't remember. And so there is no more to say. Goodbye, Miss Ginny, goodbye."

Ginny gasped. "How can you know my name? What's going on here?"

Tom opened his mouth. In the days and weeks and months to come, Ginny would wonder if he would have said anything more, if he would have explained anything, if they'd just had a little bit more time.

But they didn't. A car screeched up beside them. Ginny stumbled back, yanking the little man with her. Although he was creepy and disturbing and had just provided an experience that couldn't have been less calculated to start off a sex-filled weekend, she didn't really want to see him squashed flat before her eyes. The door swung open and then slammed shut. Draco Malfoy stalked out, and he looked furious.

Ginny was caught between what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-here, Malfoy shock and indignation that he was actually angry, for Freya's sake, as if she'd done something wrong. For a fleeting, perfectly mad instant, the only possible explanation seemed to be that her mother had somehow found out where she was going and what she was doing and had sent Draco Malfoy after her to give her a stern talking-to. However, this passed rather quickly, but not only because of its utter insanity. The other reason was that Ginny realized he wasn't angry at her. He was headed towards the little man, and with a jerk of his head, they both moved off the road, several yards away from her. They exchanged murmured words for a few minutes, so quietly that she couldn't hear a word either of them said. Then Draco turned and headed back to the car.

Ginny let out a breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding when she saw him. He just looked so completely… different, compared to the way he had when he first stepped out of the sleek, black Mercedes. All of the tension in his face and body were gone, and he was smiling at her.

"Having a spot of trouble, Weasley?" he asked in a friendly, careless voice.

She pursed her lips at him, trying—and failing—to figure out anything at all about what had just gone on. "What the hell was that with the garden gnome back there?" she asked abruptly.

"Oh—old Tom Jones," Draco said lightly. "He's a town fixture. He's lived here forever, and he isn't quite right in the head, let's just say. He's harmless, but he likes to hang about on the road late at night and scare travelers. I was just warning him off you. No worries, Weasley. But you do look like you could use some help." He glanced back at the abandoned Fiat, and then smiled pleasantly at her again. "Why don't you get in my car?"

Oh, I can think of some very good reasons. Ginny scowled. She was sorely tempted to tell him in exactly which area he could put his offer of help (and a rather delectably muscled area, too, from what she recalled seeing at Starwitch's Coffeeshop. Draco really had gained weight in all the right places.) But at that precise moment, it began to rain.

"With my luck, serial killers will start showing up next, instead of just village idiots," she said. "So I guess I'd better."

"I'm the lesser of two evils, then?" asked Draco.

"That's about the size of it," said Ginny.

The car's interior smelled like expensive leather and gleaming tropical woods that had been hand-polished by miniature house-elves with chamois leather hands that could reach into every tiny nook and cranny. "I'm dripping on your seat, I hope you realize," said Ginny, a bit belligerently. "But I suppose you'll just have your servants perform custom Drying charms on it when you get home."

"Of course," said Draco. "What else? He almost seemed to recognize you, didn't he?"

"Who?"

"Tom Jones."

Ginny glanced at him suspiciously. Had Draco's voice been just a bit too casual? But what kind of sense would that make? Why should Draco Malfoy care if random insane village idiots who met her on a godforsaken hellhole of a road in the middle of the night thought they knew who she was?

"No," said Ginny. "I think he's a bit beyond recognizing anybody."

Draco looked at her sideways for another moment. It was a peculiarly intense look, as if he were trying to figure out something, or expected her to reveal something.

"Would you keep your eyes on the road, Malfoy?" snapped Ginny.

"Oh, this car's steered by a Global Elf-Positioning System, Weasley, never fear," Draco said cheerfully, breaking off the odd stare. "Where to, by the way?"

Ginny glared at him. She really didn't know what to say. She was overwhelmed by the same ridiculously embarrassed feeling that had swept over her at Madame Lonelyheart's Coffee Lounge, for one thing. In her mind, Draco Malfoy had morphed back into a sinister Death Eater, dressed all in funereal black no matter how hot the summer day and ready to cackle fiendishly whilst delivering virgins to random Dark Lords for a spot of sacrifice at any given moment (which gave her more reason than ever to stay away from him, she thought.) Instead, he was downright cheerful. Death Eaters were not cheerful. Better to just abandon that entire line of thinking and move on.

The only thing that made sense in that case was to ask him to give her a lift to the cabin, of course, but that might be even worse, Ginny realized. Could he somehow know what was going on? Oh, he couldn't. And yet, she could believe that this Draco Malfoy would always know everything. He would raise one aristocratic, perfectly plucked eyebrow, and then he'd say in his plummiest pureblood accent, May I confirm that I comprehend this situation correctly? Have I become a pimp? Are you a high-class whore? Am I delivering you to a customer's bed? How much are you planning to charge? Will I receive a share of the profits? Should I take photographs? You bdo/b understand that they'll promptly be sold to Playwizard, of course--

Oh, stuff it!

"There's a cottage if you keep going west," Ginny said stiffly, feeling no better for having come to a decision. "I'll tell you just how to get there. Take a left--"

But he'd already begun to turn the wheel without even looking at her. This seemed a bit odd. They drove on for a little while.

"Okay, now a right at the—" Ginny began.

Draco had already smoothly turned the car into a rather obscure little lane. Could this have been a coincidence? She looked at him suspiciously. It was just barely possible, she supposed.

"And at the crossroads—" she started to say, but it was too late. Draco had already successfully negotiated the dogleg kitty-corner roundabout maneuver that Michael had warned her would probably take several tries to get right, and that just might involve getting her car thoroughly stuck in the mud first.

"What's going on, Malfoy?" Ginny demanded. "You seem to know where you're going awfully well for somebody who claimed they didn't know this road at all!"

Draco sighed. He didn't turn his head—which was a good thing, Ginny thought, seeing as how it was rather in her best interests for him to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead—but she could just feel him giving her a long, incredulous, perhaps pitying look. He'd never claimed any such thing, which she remembered almost before the words had even left her mouth. I wonder where St. Mungo's is from here? I really hope this road doesn't lead there… I hope it isn't a convenient stop along the way… he might decide it would be easiest to just drop me off… Ginny wriggled uncomfortably in her leather seat.

"One of our places is quite nearby," Draco finally said, apparently having decided to take pity on her sad mental plight.

"One of our…? Who's 'we'?" asked Ginny.

Up went the perfectly plucked eyebrow again. "One of the Malfoy properties," Draco said quite patiently, as if explaining a remarkably basic switch-and-flick wand technique to a particularly slow child in a remedial wizarding class for first years. "It's a large estate, of course. But I do remember this cottage. It's a cute little place. We used to allow some of our servants to holiday here."

She glared harder, mostly in embarrassment. "Let's just get there, okay?"

His urbane smile did not change. His surface was impervious, she thought. There was nothing she could say or do that could affect him in any way. Perversely, she wanted to find something that would. Oh, forget it! I'm on my way to Michael Corner and we're going to have sex. Who cares about Draco Malfoy, even though he smells sort of spicy and chocolatey and… I wonder, is he eating chocolate? Would he give me some if I asked? Ginny cast a surreptitious, sideways glance at him. No, he didn't seem to be eating anything. But then, one could never tell exactly what Draco Malfoy was or wasn't doing, could one?

The Mercedes pulled up to the end of the drive. The cottage was invisible in the pitch darkness, but she knew it had to be there. "Thanks," said Ginny. "Now, if you'll let me out—"

"You do have a suitcase in the boot of this car," pointed out Draco. "Remember?"

"Of course I remember," snapped Ginny.

He carried it up to the entrance porch for her. As they approached the door, she devoutly wished that he hadn't insisted on doing it. She was staring to have a Very, Very Bad Feeling About All of This. It intensified a thousandfold when she saw the white envelope stuck into the screen door. She pulled out the note with a sinking sensation.

Dear Ginny—

I don't know how to say this, so I'll just say that I'm sorry. I should have known that this wasn't going to work. I would have gone through with it anyway, but you were so late that I really had time to think it over, and I realized just how wrong it would have been to do this to you. So I've left. I've started to see someone else, and I'm beginning to have feelings for her that I don't have for you and don't think I ever will. Please at least give me credit for that much honesty, if you can. I know you're likely to be pretty brassed off at me now, but I hope that you think about what I'm going to say to you. Don't give yourself to someone who only cares for you as a friend, which is what I did and do. Wait, Ginny. Wait. You'll find a man who loves you. I'm just not that man. But I'll always be your friend, I hope. I think I'll stay away from you for a bit, though, because I remember your Bat-Bogey curse from fourth year. I'll bet Draco Malfoy still has the scars!

Michael


	4. All Alone in a Cottage on Lyme Bay

CHAPTER FOUR

A/N: Thanks to all reviewers, especially rcr, Krissy, and shana rose.

Oh, but this chapter was so much fun to write. :) Fun, fun, fun! I hope it's fun to read, too.

For those who originally started reading from the beginning: I originally uploaded Chapter 3 BEFORE Chapter 2, so Chapter 2 was deleted and reuploaded, Anyway, for everyone else, y'all won't notice anything different.

Studies of sexual behavior are distorted by the assumption, seemingly based on an almost Victorian prudery among ethologists, that the male is the main actor… and the task of the female is merely to indicate willingness ("receptivity") and then lie down and think of England.

-- Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, Not In Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature.

Ginny folded the letter and leaned against the doorframe. She had a sudden, horrible desire to stuff Michael Corner into a kiln and turn it to its highest setting.

"He didn't show up, did he?" she heard Draco ask softly behind her.

"How do you know?" she asked tiredly, too exhausted and disappointed to even care that Draco Malfoy apparently did know the entire sordid story.

He sat on the step and beckoned for her to sit beside him. "Weasley, this cottage is Malfoy property. I know everything that the tenants do. The Corner family are cousins of our land manager here. I certainly was aware that Michael Corner booked the place for the weekend, and this particular road doesn't really lead much of anywhere else. When I saw your car broken down…" He shrugged. "Outstanding detective ability wasn't exactly required, let's just say."

She wondered if Lucius Malfoy had ever happened to come to this cottage. That was a thought calculated to drive her away, if anything ever would. "I think I'd better leave." Ginny tried to get to her feet, but a big hand on her arm stopped her.

"Don't be ridiculous. What are you going to do, walk all the way to Lyme Regis?"

"You could drive me," Ginny pointed out.

"I doubt there's anything open at this hour. The hotels all close by ten o'clock. Anyway, you'd probably lose your way, fall over a cliff, and end up as a light midnight snack for the Lyme Bay monster. They do say it's actually a prehistoric plesiosaur. Those were carnivorous, I believe."

"Then I'll stay in the cottage, and you can just—just—sleep in the car!" Ginny finished rather wildly.

Draco looked at her in a way that made her feel remarkably foolish. "Would you please tell me exactly why I should feel any need to sleep in the car when there are perfectly good accommodations in that cottage? That Malfoy cottage, I might add?"

Ginny put a hand over her eyes. "Go away, Malfoy."

"I'm not going to do any such thing," said Draco. "I just told you. It's family property, and I'm staying in it."

"You mean I've got to spend the night with you?"

"Somehow, I think you'll survive the experience," he said dryly.

Ginny blushed, instantly and very hotly, she was afraid. Draco really did have to know exactly why she was there, after all. As he'd pointed out himself, it wasn't difficult to put the pieces together.

The gallery bedroom had a very large king size bed in it, made up with a velvety green spread. When Ginny saw it, she couldn't help thinking about she had planned on doing in it with Michael Corner. She caught Draco looking at it. Is he thinking about the same thing? Shite, I wish I could just stop blushing!

He met her eye briefly and stepped back from the bed, his hands in his pockets, a pleasant smile on his much-too-pretty face (and it just isn't fair, Ginny thought, because men shouldn't be pretty at all, it isn't fair to be so pretty and so completely, breathtakingly masculine all at the same time. It's too much. And then to be so pompous and irritating and superior, and to look down his long nose at me that way…

And let's not forget the way he got back from that bed so fast. Now, that was just downright insulting, wasn't it? He could at least have given you a sort of sideways smile. I'll bet that's what he would have done with Astoria Greengrass, if she were here, said a sly voice in her mind.

Shut up! she mentally snarled at it. I don't need you causing trouble as well. And I don't care what Malfoy would be doing with that Greengrass bitch, if she were here.

Oh, don't you? said the voice. I'll bet Malfoy wouldn't have just smiled at her. I'll bet they would have jumped right in this bed. Maybe they actually have. This cottage is Malfoy property, after all. Maybe he's brought her here already. He took her to last year's Pureblood Regency Ball, didn't he?

Ginny immediately began to hum the Chudley Cannons Fight Song, which normally could drown out any degree of disturbing thoughts. It wasn't doing a very good job in this case. But her brain couldn't seem to picture Astoria actually getting into this bed with him. Thank all the gods for small mercies, thought Ginny, although this was a thought that did not last long. No, the blonde slag disappeared rather quickly, and then Draco was all by himself, and then a different girl appeared in his arms, one that just happened to have long red hair, strangely enough, and he kissed her passionately and pulled her down onto the bed and then—

Ginny put her suitcase down with a thud.

"You're sleeping on the couch in the sitting room, of course," she said.

"Of course," said Draco, his voice measured, polite, and very, very exceptionally patient. "I think you'd best take the bed, Weasley. You clearly need a good night's sleep. And keeping that goal in mind, my advice would be to stop humming the Chudley Cannons Fight Song."

The bed was very comfortable, but Ginny did not sleep well. She kept waking up from restless, broken, maddening dreams about being kissed and held and caressed by a faceless man. She seemed to get a little further in each one, but they never actually reached any kind of a conclusion, and her frustration was mounting higher and higher. In the last one, he'd actually got her clothes off. But now it was—she squinted at the clock—three in the morning, and she couldn't fall asleep again at all. She pushed back the coverlet. The full moon was streaming in through the window. Maybe that was part of what was making her restless. Or maybe it was… oh, why couldn't she just fall into that dream again and finish it? He'd had his hands on her breasts and his tongue in her mouth and in another moment he was going to shift his weight and get on top of her and finish what he'd started, she just knew it! She got up and began to pace back and forth.

The frustration made sense, of course. She'd come to this cottage specifically for the purpose of having sex, she'd been ready to do it, and then the opportunity had been snatched away from her. Naturally, she was having dreams about it. Michael had deserted her, so she didn't insert him into her fantasies of completion. Naturally, she pictured a faceless man as her sexual partner. One with bright blond hair and gray eyes, the pupils large and dark from his arousal, like purple plums with a silver sheen on them, and a narrow face and pink lips, and big hands and a very large shoe size, from what she could see, and she knew what girls always said about big hands and feet…

Ginny groaned. Fuck! She was picturing Draco Malfoy!

Without stopping to think—because if she had stopped, she would have thought herself right out of it—she walked very quietly into the next room and stared down at Draco where he lay sleeping on the couch. It was a very small couch, she thought guiltily. His legs were coming half off of it. Very nice legs, too. Ginny peered at his thighs more closely. When she thought about it objectively, her objectification of the cottage's owner as sexual fantasy material did make perfect sense. To put it crudely, thought Ginny, she wanted to get laid. Draco Malfoy was the only man available at the moment. Of course she'd want to use him.

Then she gasped in horror at the awful, horrible, hideous direction of her thoughts. She couldn't… she wouldn't… she'd never……

Jump that gorgeous piece of man-candy and ride him like a kneazle in heat? her mind slyly suggested.

"No!" groaned Ginny.

Draco shifted in his sleep, frowning. "Mm.. mm… mar…"

Ginny froze. What the hell was that? What did he start to say? 'Morning?' 'Marmite?' 'Marine?' Well, we're on Lyme Bay, after all…

But Draco lapsed back into silence, and she relaxed again, at least to a degree. Her very disobedient mind kept whispering traitorous ideas to her, of course. Your first reaction to Michael's smarmy little letter was that he was full of shite and all you wanted was to find a delectable boy toy and get off with him, wasn't it? Hmmm? Nearly twenty years of Molly Weasley's training squashed that thought pretty fast, but it popped right up again as soon as you saw Malfoy in the moonlight, my dear.

"It did not," she hissed to her brain, dimly aware that this activity did not represent the pinnacle of mental health.

Methinks the Weasley doth protest too much, it answered her mockingly. Remember what Colin said about Malfoy? I seem to recall something about a 'callous playboy who litters the landscape with his castoff girlfriends.' While that's not precisely a generous estimate of anyone's character, it does mean that he'd make the perfect playmate, wouldn't he? No strings attached, no difficult emotional entanglements. You could just enjoy him, and I'm sure he'd enjoy you.

"Stop it! Go away!"

Now, really, Ginny, ordering your own brain to disappear? it chided her. Whatever would Dr. Freud say about that? But let's get back to the main point, which is relieving your unbearable sexual frustration with the delectable stud-muffin sleeping before you—ah, I see that you bdo/b have some interest in that subject, after all. Just think, Ginny. It would be so easy. So straightforward. All you'd have to do would be to reach out, shake him by the shoulder, and say, 'Malfoy, wake up, I'd like to have sex with you.' Something tells me that he'd spring to attention instantly, shall we say. I doubt he'd even need coffee. He'd be more than happy to oblige. And then he could drive you back down to London in the morning, and there'd be no awkwardness whatsoever, because he does this sort of thing all the time. Do it, Ginny. What are you afraid of? Just reach your hand out and touch him. Here, like this--

It must have been that errant part of her brain that grabbed her hand and placed it on Draco Malfoy's chest, thought Ginny, because she certainly hadn't decided to do it.

She'd never touched him before. Not really. And oh, he felt so good. It was all she could think of. His muscles were so warm and firm under her hand, and she just had to skim her fingers along them, from his collarbone on down. And down. And down.

"I shouldn't do this, I shouldn't, this isn't happening, I'm going to stop any second, this is me stopping right now," she muttered. "I absolutely should not be doing this." He was still thin but no longer skinny; everything was just put together perfectly now, and her mouth watered as she felt the shift and play of those muscles. Gods, but how could he sleep through all of this? Still, he did. He stretched under her touch like a cat and moved and sighed and shifted position, but he never really seemed to even begin to wake up. Her fingers lingered at the waistband of his pyjamas.

"Stop this, Ginny, stop it, stop it now," she chanted to herself. "This is the stupidest thing I've ever done in my entire life. I don't even like Draco Malfoy. All right, he may or may not be truly evil at heart beneath the charm and the tennis and the non-puppy-strangling, I really don't know, but either way, I cannot stand the arrogant berk. I would sooner feel up a flobberworm. Stop it." Yes, she would stop what she was doing instantly. Now that her mind was in perfect agreement on this point, she moved her hand down and stroked him below his waist.

All of his muscles tightened, and he gave a little jump. His dark blond eyelashes fluttered, but remained closed. But Ginny's eyes widened. Something was certainly stirring down there! She couldn't stop herself now; she couldn't help herself, she was like a starving woman in front of a tray of fresh meat. She had to know. Her fingers traced the outline of his erection beneath the thin material of the pyjamas. Down, and down, and down they went; sideways they stretched, and her mouth went dry. Maybe it was just that the yardstick for her mental measurement was Harry, but Draco seemed huge.

Ginny's other hand strayed between her legs and began to rub firmly. "Oh, fuck, I shouldn't do this," she moaned. No,you shouldn't, her mind agreed. You should be getting down to some serious work on that fucking-Draco-Malfoy-project instead. Move just a bit to the left, start kissing him on the mouth, get on top of him, straddle him, spread your legs, feel that beautiful cock of his pressed up against you… come on, Ginny, time to wake him up…

Her body was tightening, readying itself for climax. She realized it incredulously. She had never come this fast in her life. She should leave now, instantly, before it happened, but… well, what could it hurt, after all? It wasn't as if Draco would ever even know. He was still asleep…

All her inner muscles seized deliciously, and Ginny stuffed her fist in her mouth to keep from crying out as an intense orgasm rippled through her. The fact that she was standing over Draco Malfoy as she came, lightly touching his body, listening to him breathe, watching him sleep, made her tremble with pleasure again and again. She sighed. Well, it wasn't the worst thing she had ever done, Ginny supposed. At least she hadn't shaken him awake and then had sex with him. Although you still could, that awful bit of her mind whispered slyly. Now would be the time, Ginny. You're ready for him. Come on, Ginny… do it…

She reached out to him, watching her hand move towards his left arm, which was upturned and flung over his face. She didn't even know, herself, what would happen if he woke up now, or what she wanted to happen. Closer and closer her fingers came to him, closer and closer…

Then he turned slightly, and she saw his inner wrist. His pale skin was charred by an ugly black scar. The Dark Mark. She stared at the inescapable reminder of what he had once been, of what he had chosen, of what had been chosen for him, of everything it must have meant to him and everything she knew those choices had cost her.

And she still wanted to touch him. She couldn't stop wanting that. Couldn't stop wanting him.

She was almost touching the back of Draco's hand now, almost brushing the tiny, white-blond hairs on his fingers, and she suddenly, shockingly knew exactly what she wanted him to do with those big knobbly fingers of his. The naughty part of her brain wasn't whispering to her anymore; oh no, this was her, all her, only her. She wanted to look down and see his fingers coaxing her legs apart, spreading her thighs wide in the moonlight, ivory on alabaster, and she wanted them to stroke her until she was squirming and ready and wet for him. Then she wanted him to steadily slide them up and up—

oh fuck, this is just getting worse and worse and WORSE--

--and up, and then in, she wanted to know what it was like to finally feel those huge fingers slide into her, to feel him pushing them all the way inside her eager body, one by one until she was sure she couldn't take any more then he'd ease in yet another and move them just so and she would shudder and weep with another orgasm, so much deeper, so much more satisfying this time as she convulsed around him, and then she wanted him to pull them slowly out of her. She would beg shamelessly for completion and fulfillment because even those wonderful fingers of his wouldn't be enough, not nearly enough, and he would kiss her and move on top of her and slowly, exquisitely slowly, replace them in her with—

NO!

--yes, yes, that beautiful, erect, enormous cock she'd felt straining towards her own fingers under his pyjama bottoms. She wanted Draco to open her body to him, sensually, gently, relentlessly, she wanted him to open her and fill her with himself until she overflowed. The thoughts and desires and images rushed through Ginny's heart in a seamless flood, in a moment, a millisecond, so quickly that her logical mind could not yet suppress them.

He turned towards her touch. His eyelids fluttered in sleep, and his lips parted.

"Marie," he said, softly, but clearly. "Marie."

She stumbled and turned away, slamming the door to the bedroom.

Ginny was silent through the entire drive back to London the next day. Draco gave up after several attempts to engage her in conversation, all of which received monosyllabic replies. They both stared out of separate windows until he dropped her off in front of her flat. She hadn't even seen any of the exceptional Jurassic fossils of Lyme, she thought drearily. She'd been so looking forward to examining the echinoderms.

When he returned the borrowed Fiat to Luna, she thought about sending him a stiff note of thanks. But Luna must have surely already thanked him, she decided. So it would be pointless. She never, ever planned on seeing him again, anyway.

Really.


	5. Black and Gold and Blaise Zabini

A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers!

_Black and Gold_ is by Samuel Falson and Jesse Rogg.

True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

- George Washington

To be fair, Ginny thought after the third failed attempt in a row, she had never really expected much out of her old friend Colin Creevey in the hot-sex department. She'd been so busy that they hadn't seen each other for a few months, and then she had run into him when she was bringing some of her clay pots to Madame Tippity's Terribly, Terribly Twee Tea Room and Art Gallery, and seen him having lunch with Justin Finch-Fletchley there. She'd wondered vaguely why Colin had blushed so when he saw her. She made another mental note to work on that finding-him-a-nice girlfriend project, when she got a bit of free time. She just never seemed to see him with any girls. Of course, he was always so busy, what with his freelance fashion design work… Her eyes narrowed speculatively, looking at him. He might be too busy for a girlfriend, but not for something else. And they were already friends.

They squealed with delight and hugged each other and vowed to never go so long without spending time together again, ever, and then they shared the latest details of each other's lives over dinner at her flat, with Luna working late at the Department of Mysteries. She never worked late, but she had made a point of telling Ginny that she wouldn't be back that night, and she had wondered out loud if Ginny's knowledge of Contraceptive spells was completely up to date and taught her several new ones. Luna could be so very helpful, Ginny thought gratefully.

Afterwards, the friendly hugs between Ginny and Colin somehow turned into snogs. His mouth tasted very sweet, his hands on her body were very pleasant, and she liked his glossy brown hair and his happy brown eyes. Everything had been going perfectly well until Colin sighed and pushed her away ever so gently.

"Ginny, er, I don't know exactly how to say this… I'm having a lovely time, I won't pretend I'm not. But do you happen to remember the 'Secret Male Homosexuality Subtext Gymnasium and Leather Bar' Justin Finch-Fletchley ran in the Gryffindor basement since my fourth year?"

Ginny thought back. "I suppose so. I remember that you were always going down there. You said that you liked to drink their strawberry smoothies. But what does that have to do with anything?"

"Doesn't that give you just a bit of a clue about my preferences?"

"That you like to wear leather trousers?" She smiled seductively. "So do I, Colin. Do you like that image?"

"Actually, Ginny, I won't deny that it speeds my pulse up a bit," Colin said carefully. "But it really starts racing when I picture those trousers stretched over one of your brother's bottoms. I was always trying to get Ron to go downstairs with me, and he just wouldn't do it. Pity, really."

"It always was hard to get Ron interested in anything but Quidditch," Ginny agreed. "Can we get back to snogging now?"

Colin gulped. "I think it's show-and-tell time." He picked up a paper clip from the desk by the couch. "See this paper clip?"

Ginny blinked. "Yes."

"How would you describe it?"

"Bent."

"Well, so am I."

"You mean…" The other penny dropped. Comprehension flooded in. "Oh," Ginny said lamely. "You're gay. You're gay, and I've been trying to get you to have sex with me. Oh, I'm so humiliated. Oh, I'm so bloody stupid…" She sank her head into her hands. Colin leaned forward and touched her head with his.

"You're not at all," he said softly, "although Cleopatra isn't the only queen of denial, and you're really going to have to get to the bottom of that distressing tendency of yours one day. Anyway, I won't say I've never taken a walk on the straight side. I have had sex with a few girls, and it's been very nice every time. I'd do it with you if you weren't my friend."

Ginny looked up, sniffling. "Really?"

"Absolutely. I'd throw you on the couch and do the dirty deed right this second, and I wouldn't think twice about it," Colin said encouragingly. "And we'd have fun. But it wouldn't be anything more, because it isn't really my thing, Ginny. And I don't want to ruin our friendship that way."

"There's that line again," mumbled Ginny. "'I don't want to ruin our friendship'… 'I'm I love with someone else'… 'I have a micropenis'…"

"That's not me," Colin said hurriedly. "I don't want untrue words to get around. Who is it, though?"

"Never mind," sighed Ginny. She didn't want to hurt Harry that much. "Colly, honestly, I only want a shag, and it just doesn't seem to be working out."

"Don't you want love? A relationship? Laughter and kisses and walks in the rain? Late-night, meaningful talks about your inmost feelings?"

"Nope," Ginny said firmly. "Just lots and lots of hot sex. But it's really as if there's some sort of curse against my ever getting it. What should I do?"

"Well… if that's really what you want…" Colin sighed. "I mean it, Ginny. I'm your friend. I want to help you out, and I'm sure I can. I know, let me think for a sec…" He drummed his fingers on the table. "Why don't you try Blaise Zabini? He'll be at Illusions Exclusive Emporium for Those of Alternate Preferences tonight just down the street, I happen to know."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Colin, even I know that's a gay bar."

"Don't let that fool you, Ginny. Blaise really doesn't believe in limiting himself," Colin informed her. "He likes girls at least as well as boys, and he'd be more than happy to give you a go. And he's quite good in bed."

"Have you tried him out?" asked Ginny in a businesslike way.

"Well, uh…" Colin blushed. "Yes, now that you ask."

"And he was good? Respectably sized, and everything?"

"Great Odin, Ginny! Are you getting ready to work as a professional companion at the Crystal Palace, or something?" Colin looked askance at her. "You've changed a bit since Hogwarts, haven't you?"

Ginny dropped her eyes, suddenly feeling ashamed. "I suppose I have," she said in a low voice. "Colly, even you don't really know everything that happened, everything that went wrong and never went right—with Harry, I mean. I can't tell you. I can't tell anyone. Don't ask, because I don't think I can explain it even to myself. I just—look, I just want to have sex, and I don't want to get emotionally involved, and Zabini sounds like a perfect opportunity."

Colin put a hand over hers. "I'm nobody to talk about avoiding emotional entanglements, I suppose," he said. "But don't let yourself get hard, Ginny, just because you've been hurt. No man is worth that. Not even Harry. Especially not Harry. Remember when I had a bit of a crush on him myself?" He smiled sadly. "More than a bit, I suppose."

"You didn't miss much," said Ginny. "Anyway. Back to Blaise Zabini. We were talking about size, I believe?"

"Very acceptable," said Colin. "Nothing to Draco Malfoy, though, from what I've heard."

"What?" exclaimed Ginny, trying (and failing, she was afraid) to sound surprised. "How do you know that?"

"Not through personal experience, believe me," said Colin, sounding very disappointed indeed.

"But wait, wait… does this mean that Malfoy is bent as well?" Oh, great. On top of everything else, I really have absolutely no gaydar at all, Ginny thought dismally. But then, 'Marie' is decidedly a girl's name, isn't it? Not that I've spent even one single second thinking about that night at the cottage…

"Not the least bit, unfortunately," sighed Colin. "I know, I know—he just seems too sexy to be strictly straight, but he is. He goes through girls as if they're boxes of Kleenex and he has the worst upper respiratory infection of all time—oh, wait, that really wasn't a good image at all, was it? Well, you know what I mean—and the entire gay community keeps hoping that means he's secretly queer and he'll come to his senses one day. But according to Zabini, he's just not. And if anyone would know, Zabini would. "

"Oh," said Ginny.

"You know…" Colin hesitated. "If all you really want is a magnificent shag or two, then I'd say that maybe you should try Malfoy, except that…"

Ginny swallowed hard. "I got the distinct impression that you thought I shouldn't touch him with a twenty-metre wand, because he's a callous playboy who litters the landscape with his cast-off girlfriends," she said, as lightly as she could.

"He is," said Colin.

"By the way, Colin… are any of those cast-off, or past-cast-off, or soon-to-be-cast-off girlfriends named Marie?" Ginny asked suddenly.

Colin looked confused. "I have no idea. But if you really, truly only want meaningless sex, then Malfoy might just fill the bill perfectly. It's only that—well, never mind. And speaking of twenty-metre wands--"

"No," said Ginny.

"All right. Back to Zabini, then. If there's anything else you want to know, just ask away."

"Is he as much of a shallow, self-obsessed poseur as he was at Hogwarts?" asked Ginny.

"Worse, sometimes."

"Positively no interest in emotional commitment at all, then?"

"Zabini can't commit to his next bite of dessert, much less a relationship," said Colin.

"But is he all right?" Ginny pressed him. "I mean, uh, you know what I mean. Not just the sex."

"I think I know what you mean," Colin said dryly. "Actually, he is. I'd throw you in the closet and lock the door before letting you out of the house tonight if I didn't think he'd treat you decently, Ginny—and no, I'm not going to make any lame coming-out-of-the-closet jokes, either, although I could introduce you to some very nice lesbians, if you like. Zabini's a poseur, no doubt about it, but he's not half bad once you get past the pose. He'd make sure that you enjoyed yourself, and he'd be considerate with you. He's not really cold, or callous. Malfoy, on the other hand…' Colin looked troubled. "He is, or he can be, from what I've heard. There's something heartless about him. And—oh, never mind."

"Colly, if you oh-never-mind me one more time, I'm going to strangle you," said Ginny. "What the hell do you know about Malfoy that you're not telling me?"

Colin sighed. "I don't know anything, Ginny. It's just that I've overheard a few things lately. Justin Finch-Fletchley works in the Department of Mysteries, you know. And even though he can't really tell me anything about any of the projects they're working on, people do drop hints. No matter how hard they try not to, they do. I've overheard Malfoy's name used, just in passing, and when I pressed Justin about it, he mumbled that he couldn't say anything and gave me a shifty look. That's all. There's no way to know what it means. Except--"

"Colin Alistair Creevey! Don't you dare 'except' me if you want to attend Illusions Exclusive Emporium tonight with an intact—"

"Touchy, are we? Except that I hate to admit you're right," said Colin grudgingly. "And I think maybe—just maybe-- you've been right all along. Remember how you've always said that you thought Draco Malfoy had spread bribes around to get the Malfoy name cleared, but that he didn't really deserve it and was probably still up to all sorts of nefarious and possibly Death Eater-y type things?"

Ginny's breath caught. "Well, yes…"

"I think it's at least possible that the Department of Mysteries is investigating him for something like that," said Colin.

"But you don't know that," said Ginny.

"No, I don't."

"And even if they are, that doesn't mean he's doing any of it."

"No, it doesn't."

"All you heard was his name mentioned, reallyy. That's not very informative," said Ginny.

"No, it isn't."

"It probably doesn't mean a thing."

"No, it probably doesn't."

"It's not as if you know anything."

"Look, I didn't say I did! All I know is that Draco Malfoy isn't a good choice for you, really, not even for what you say you want. You think you're cold, Ginny, but you're not." Colin touched her hand lightly. "You're very warm. I can feel it. No, I think you'd better stick to Zabini."

Ginny smiled. "Perfect. Put in a good word for me with him, Colly, all right?"

She had an absolutely wonderful time that night in the club, dancing to a techno remix of Black and Gold, surrounded by Colin's friends, all of whom declared that they loved her hair, ordered her to never cut it, and wanted to adopt her as a mascot. But she was looking for Blaise Zabini.

_If the fish swam out of the ocean_

_and grew legs and they started walking_

_and the apes climbed down from the trees_

_and grew tall and they started talking_

She craned her neck, trying to see through the clouds of smoke. Where was he? Aha! There, by the bar! She hadn't seen Blaise Zabini since the day of the last battle at Hogwarts, but she recognized him instantly. He still had the same close-cropped curly hair, the same slanted, sparkly green eyes, and the same pretty-boy sculpted face. He stood languidly, leaning against the bar, taking in the entire scene with a cynical, worldly smile. She had told him once, rather scathingly, that he was only good at posing, and at first sight of him, her opinion of him hadn't changed much. But she'd always thought that he probably wasn't half as bad as he seemed, and she still believed that, too. He was certainly a very good-looking young man. She appraised him dispassionately. He had Colin Creevey's official stamp of approval, and that was good enough for her.

She waved at Blaise. He looked over and saw her. His eyes lit up, and he smiled. Clearly, Colin had set him wise about the lay of the land. This would be very simple. And gods, but how she needed it to be. The heat of the tightly packed club, the beat of the music, the buzz of the scotch and sodas she'd drunk, the tingly anticipation, the light stir of stimulation from the abortive snogging she'd done with Colin, all combined to set Ginny's pulse throbbing. Her breath was short as she made her way to where Blaise was standing, and she felt her sensitive nipples chafe against her lace bra. She wriggled a bit, feeling the slight tenderness between her legs. It wouldn't take much to make her ready. Blaise was making room for her now, ordering a drink, gesturing in welcome. His lips were forming words that looked like great to see you again, Ginny, sit down, why don't you, although it was impossible to tell, because the music was just so incredibly loud. He really did look glad to see her, thought Ginny. She sat on the barstool he'd pulled out for her. Now his arm was going round her back to keep her from falling off. How many scotch and sodas had she already drunk, anyway? It didn't matter.

Blaise was now mouthing something about _Colin said you'd be here tonight_, and buying her even more drinks. Now he was rubbing the small of her back and releasing all the sore muscles, and the beat of the song went on and on.

_'cause if you're not really here_

_then the stars don't even matter_

_now I'm filled to the top with fear_

_that it's all just a bunch of matter_

She very much liked the idea of _going somewhere a bit quieter and continuing the conversation, what do you say, Ginny?_ And she was fairly sure that it wasn't only because she'd had… wait, how many scotch and sodas did that make again? In some analytical part of her brain, she'd decided that Blaise Zabini would make for quite a good shagging partner. He'd be careful and considerate, he'd make sure that she had fun, and they could have a very nice breakfast in the morning. Of course, anyone who expected anything more than casual fun from him would be sadly disappointed, but more was the last thing Ginny wanted, or expected.

Having made up her mind, she allowed Blaise to help her off the barstool. The floor did seem to be making a valiant effort to escape under her feet, but he did a very good job of helping her tread carefully over it. If necessary, she reflected, he could probably carry her.

"Now, you do understand that I expect a good long session of very hot fucking, so I hope you're up to it, Zabini," she said earnestly, picking her way round the designs in the tiles, all of which seemed to be laughing at her at once.

Blaise sucked in his breath. "Damn, Ginny Weasley! Where the hell have you been hiding yourself for the past three and a half years? Come on, we're almost to the door."

Everything was going extremely well, Ginny later reflected, until a coldly furious Draco Malfoy stepped right in their path and blocked their way.

Everything just seemed to sort of freeze for a second, except that the song played on and on, the beat thumping loudly through the noise of the club.

_'cause if you're not really here_

_then I don't want to be either_

_I wanna be next to you_

_black and gold_

_Black and gold._

"What are you doing here, mate?" Blaise asked Draco. "It's not your usual hangout at all."

"Never mind that," snapped Draco. "Let go of her."

"Don't spoil my game, Draco," said Blaise.

"Yes, well, then don't spoil mine. The tennis tournament is tomorrow, or don't you remember? Do the words 'at the crack of dawn' mean anything to you?"

Blaise waved a dismissive hand. "It's just a bit of fun, Draco. I'll have plenty of energy in the morning."

"I doubt that. And must you really drag some random slut home with you every night?" Draco asked through clenched teeth.

"She's not random at all. She's Ginny Weasley, mate," said Blaise, laughing. "Remember her from Hogwarts?"

Icy gray eyes surveyed Ginny. She looked back at him muzzily. Why did there seem to be two of him? Both Draco Malfoys looked as if they were tremendously angry with her.

"As I said, Zabini," Draco said in a cold, measured voice, "you can't go back to your flat to spend all night shagging anyone, whether she—or he, or what have you, which seems to be your modus operandi these days, and I suppose Weasley is at least a thorough change from that-- is a slut we already know, or not."

"Weasley's no slut, and she's about as female as they come, now isn't she?" said Blaise, smirking. Could a smirk actually be heard? wondered Ginny. Apparently so. "But I think she's a bit too out of it for decent shagging-- tonight, anyway," he went on. "I'll sleep on the couch and give her the bed, that sort of thing always impresses girls with how noble I am. Then in the morning, I'll pop out for a spot of tennis with you, return to give her a good Hangover potion, she's even more in my debt, and tomorrow night, I reap the rewards."

"Nice little racket," sneered Draco.

"It's not a racket," said Blaise, sounding hurt. "I do something nice for her, she does something nice for me. I prefer to think of it as returning the favour."

"She's not going to return any favours for you. She's not going anywhere with you! Let go of her. I mean it. Let go of her now, or I'll—"

The room was starting to spin, although Ginny couldn't decide which direction it was going in. Blaise lowered her to a chair, which made it a bit easier to evaluate the situation. Clockwise. No, counterclockwise. No, round and round and round and-- oooh. She closed her eyes. Snippets of conversation drifted to her ears like waves on a roiling sea.

"--if you want her for yourself, mate, I remember our hands-off policy. I'll stick to it. Shame, though," Blaise said regretfully. "She's a little spitfire. Imagine that in bed—"

"You'd better not even be imagining her in a bed!"

Well, that couldn't be Draco's voice. Why would he care how Blaise imagined her? He wanted Marie, after all, whoever she was.

Hands held her head up gently. Ginny opened her eyes a crack. The hands were the color of coffee with lots of cream in it. Blaise's hands. "Look, I think someone's got to take her home. Get Colin Creevey; he's her friend."

"Get away," said Draco.

"No," said Blaise. "She's sick. Someone's got to stay with her."

"Since when did you become a humanitarian? Weasley was already going to let you fuck her, you know. You don't have to play St. Blaise as well."

"You're a right bastard sometimes, Malfoy," said Blaise.

That was the last thing Ginny heard clearly, because she was suddenly, copiously, and dreadfully sick. All over Blaise's lovely club attire, she was afraid.

_'cause if you're not really here_

_then I don't want to be either_

_I wanna be next to you_

_black and gold_

_Black and gold._


	6. Ginny and Draco and a Bearskin Rug

Thanks to all the reviewers! Lots of good stuff in this chapter.

The rain and the wind tore at her, soaking her to the skin, flattening her hair to her head, and she shivered violently and sheltered herself under his cloak. Come with me, said Draco, you'll have to come with me, there's no other way, and his voice was very urgent and almost afraid. She tried to answer him, but the wind tore the words out of her mouth, and anyway she felt the queasy pull of sidealong Apparition as he took her with him, wherever they were going.

She was cold. Why was she so cold? She was stumbling along an uneven stone walkway, and the cold wind was blowing in from the sea, and she was alone. She'd been separated from Draco. Something terrible had happened, or was about to happen, and the stones shifted and moved under her feet. She stooped to pick one up, and she saw that it wasn't a stone at all, but a spiral shell.

I knew that I would find you, said a voice. I knew that you would come.

She looked up, and for one horrifying moment she thought that it bwas/b Draco. She looked into the face of a man who might have risen from a freshly dug grave, deadly pale, his hair snow white and hanging about his shoulders in straggly wisps, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a mirthless grin.

I have been waiting for you, Ginny Weasley, said Lucius Malfoy.

You're dead, she said. You're dead. You died six months after the war. It can't be you. You're dead.

She kept repeating the words over and over, like a mantra that would surely, surely make him go away and end this nightmare, because surely, a nightmare was all that it could possibly be. She didn't dare to back up, because she was already at the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. She could hear the hiss and crash of the waves against the Cobb. Yes. The Cobb; that was where she was. She was on Lyme Bay.

The Weasleys may be blood traitors, but still, your family's blood is pure, said Lucius. As are you, Ginny. As are you.

She shook her head.

Do not trouble to deny it, said Lucius. We know that you remain untouched, as for our purposes, you must be. Any Malfoy must know that his sons are his own, but now, at our new beginning, it is more vital than ever.

Don't touch me, she said. I will jump off this cliff if you do. It was easy to say this calmly in a nightmare, but Ginny thought that she would say it during waking life just as easily, just as quickly. Just not as calmly. But it wouldn't be necessary, of course, because Lucius Malfoy had been dead for a long time. Just a nightmare, just a nightmare, she chanted in her mind.

Lucius laughed. Ginny, you flatter me, he said. But I don't speak of myself. No. The Malfoy who breeds the next generation of purebloods on your body, who uses you to aid in redeeming the mistakes of the past, will be my son.

No, she whispered, and then she was staggering backwards, she didn't care that there was nothing behind her, nothing to break her fall, because this wasn't real and she wasn't even sure in that moment that she cared if it was or not, because Lucius Malfoy was reaching out his long bony hands towards her and the moonlight glittered in his mad ice-colored eyes, and then other hands were reaching for her and snatching her away.

For a terrified instant she thought it was Lucius minus thirty years of life, suddenly transformed in some inexplicable way but still the same madman, and she fought and struggled and screamed, and he cursed and grabbed her hands.

Stop it, Ginny, stop, you're only hurting yourself! Stop, can't you? Shh. Sh, it's all right. Shh.

She kept screaming something about Malfoy, let go of me, Malfoy, let go, and he demanded urgently to know if his father had hurt her in any way or even touched her, and she sobbed no, and somewhere in the middle of it she understood that she was talking to Draco now, and that Lucius was gone.

He's d-d-dead, she said. He can't have t-t-touched me. He's d-d-dead.

Of course he is, said Draco. Of course he couldn't have. You know that nothing he might have said to you was true or real, don't you? It was all part of the nightmare, wasn't it?

Of c-c-course.

So you'll forget it all, won't you?

I will. I will. T-t-t-errible things, he said horrible things. He said you'd use me to 'help redeem the mistakes of the past' or something, that you'd use my body—it was so awful, I was so afraid—

Shh, Ginny. Shh. It was only a nightmare. It didn't happen at all. You'll forget it now. You will, won't you?

He took her into someplace warm then, and made a fire, and laid her down in front of it, but she was still shivering so hard that she couldn't speak.

You've got to get those wet clothes off, he finally said.

He turned round and she tried to take off her blouse and trousers, she really did, but her fingers were numb with cold and she couldn't begin to get the buttons through the buttonholes and she finally whimpered and gave up. When he turned back, she had curled up into a ball on the floor and was shivering harder than ever.

You t-t-take them off, she said.

He groaned and looked into the fire. She could feel tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. P-p-p-lease, she said.

He left her then and she was afraid, but he came back in a few moments with a pile of towels in his hands. He knelt down beside her and began by unbuttoning her blouse. He peeled all of the wet clothing off of her and then started rubbing her with towels. It all felt heavenly and Ginny sighed and arched her back and rolled into the warmth of his hands.

Oh gods, oh gods, he was muttering under his breath, and she couldn't understand what was wrong. It was a dream, after all, where every prohibition melted and floated away like a feather. Everything was natural and right; nothing was, or could be, forbidden. His touch was taking away the horror of the nightmare. In some corner of her mind, Ginny thought how strange it was that he couldn't understand that. And he kept holding himself stiffly away from her, all the way on the other side of the rug.

Put this on, he said, handing her a pair of trousers and a shirt that were ludicrously large, because they were obviously his. He was holding them out to her at the very tips of his fingers. She had to touch him or something terrible might happen, so Ginny sat up and kissed him without any warning whatsoever. Oh, how wonderful his slippery chocolately mouth tasted! She licked her lips. She needed more and more and more of him, not just this tiny morsel, or she might starve to death.

But now he was pushing her back and trying to shove an undershirt over her head. She twisted away and then reared up and ran her hands up his neck and tried to twine them in his hair, to pull him closer; she nuzzled him because she had to know if he smelled like dark chocolate everywhere, if that scent was all over his skin, and she breathed in deeply because the more she smelled, the more she craved. She wanted to lick every inch of him. Had to.

Stop it, Ginny, you have to stop this immediately, he groaned, but he wasn't pushing her away now. You're in terrible danger. We have to leave as soon as we possibly can. And sweet Merlin, you were just almost kidnapped—uh—I mean, you had a horrible nightmare about it, how can you even think this sort of thing—

But that's why, she said desperately. Don't you understand? I have to make the nightmare go away. Please, Draco, please… make me forget…

We can't do this, he said. We can't. We just can't. We absolutely can't.

Ginny wriggled her shoulders and let the towel fall. Then she pressed her breasts against his chest and sighed voluptuously. The sensation of her nipples chafing against his shirt was arousing and frustrating to the point of pain, stirring her craving for him to an even higher pitch.

We have to, she said urgently, between bites on his neck. When I'm awake, I hate you.

Oh, fuck, this is wrong! he said in a choked voice. You have no idea how wrong, Ginny… no idea…

She had let the other towel fall, and now she was completely naked. She was half-lying on the floor, and he was half-kneeling between her legs, but still holding himself away from her.

It's very right, she said.

I won't do this, he repeated.

And she suddenly bucked her hips up and wrapped her ankles around him. She could feel how hard he was against her, she could feel him throbbing between her legs. He groaned and thrust his hips forward and oh gods, now she could really feel just how big he was, how hard, Circe, his erection felt absolutely huge, and if she'd been awake, she probably would have been rather frightened at the idea of trying to fit all of him inside her. But it was a dream, and she was wrapped up in the moment and the fever and her desire for him, sinking into the essence of all things Draco Malfoy, and she moaned and thrust back at him, and when he tried to pull away, cursing savagely under his breath, she drew him back and whispered in his ear.

Please, she whispered. I want you. I can never have you. Not really. But in a dream, I can have anything. So let me have you now. If I have to beg, I'll beg… please, Draco, please…

He kept saying no, no, no, over and over, and she did beg then, shamelessly.

I'll make you forget Marie, she finally said, because she could think of nothing else. I don't know who she is, Draco, it doesn't matter who she is, but I'll make you forget her. Even if it's just for now, just in a dream. Don't you want that?

He looked at her as if he'd look through her and into her soul, more deeply than anyone had ever looked into her before. Then he laughed, and Ginny thought it was the strangest laugh she'd ever heard. Yes, he said. Then he was very still for just a moment.

I am so weak, he whispered. I am no damn good at all. There is no good thing in me, Ginny. I can't resist you. I can't. I can't. Forgive me, oh gods, forgive me for what I'm about to do to you.

She moaned and reached up to him and twined round him and he started pulling off his shirt, and she could already hear him muttering apologies in her ear, but it didn't matter, nothing mattered except that she was going to get what she wanted so desperately. He got up on his knees and yanked his trousers off, and she saw him, and her eyes widened.

This isn't a dream. This is real. The thought flashed through her head for just a moment.

She saw the expression on his face change. You've never done this before, he said. Have you.

She shook her head. She was clutching a towel to her chest again, although she didn't remember picking it up.

He nodded once, as if in confirmation. He suddenly looked very tired.

I won't do this to you, Ginny, he said, and this time, she didn't argue with him.

Draco passed a hand over her face. Go back to sleep, he whispered. This is a dream. Only a dream. You'll wake up in the morning, and you won't remember it. Not really.

Ginny blearily opened one eye. The sun was directly hitting her head in a very obnoxious way.

"Bleargh," she mumbled. She could just tell that it was one of those mornings where every single hair on her head was sticking out in a different direction. Also, her mouth tasted as if several unidentified small animals had crawled into the night before and died horrible deaths. She tried to sit up, but the attempt was not outstandingly successful and simply failed halfway through. She flopped back down on the bed.

The remarkably comfortable bed.

The king-sized bed. Ginny opened the other eye.

The luxurious canopy bed, where one hand-stitched pillowcase alone probably cost more than all of the furnishings in her and Luna's flat put together.

This was not her bed. Something very strange was going on. And she could distinctly hear the sound of breathing. Not her own.

Very slowly, Ginny rolled over and turned round. She looked directly into the amused face of Draco Malfoy.

"Good morning, Weasley," he said lightly. "Or should I say afternoon? I never knew you were such a sleepyhead; somehow I've never pictured you laying abed as late as one o'clock. But then, you were engaged in some rather energetic activities last night, weren't you? Care for some espresso? Only there's no cherry flavoring, I'm afraid."

Ginny shrieked.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers!

One little clue: the "dream sequence" at the beginning of Chapter 6… without giving anything else away about what it was or wasn't, it was not a flashback, or a memory from the past. It took place very much in the present time of this fic.

Draco winced. "I might have had some interest in keeping my hearing in that ear intact, you know."

"I don't care what you'd like to keep intact!" said Ginny. "Where's my wand?"

"With the rest of your clothes, I'm sure. But at any rate…" He was going to smirk. With dread, Ginny saw it coming. Oh! There it goes… The left half of his mouth curved up in the most infuriating way possible, emphasizing a little dimple in his cheek. "That's not what you were saying last night," he said.

Ginny sunk her head in her hands. Her worst fears had been realized. I'm a slut, she thought numbly. A complete slag! I've jumped right into Draco Malfoy's Official Pool of Slutty Slags, just like I swore I'd never do. She stole a sideways look at him. He was still smirking, damn him, deliciously disheveled in a partially unbuttoned pyjama top, and she could see that his chest was very smooth. Her mouth went a little dry. She didn't like the furry look one bit, and bare skin was particularly flattering on Draco because it set off his sinewy chest muscles perfectly. No hair at all, I think. Mm. Oh… but there's sort of this little trail, if I keep looking down, and it leads to, but I can't quite see… boh/b. I must have seen it last night, though, and I don't even remember anything about it! That was the worst part of all, Ginny thought drearily. She'd finally had sex, she must have done, but she couldn't remember one single bit of it. Did that even count? Maybe the no-sex curse hadn't yet been officially broken after all.

"Malfoy, what did you do?" she groaned.

"Nothing you didn't want," said Draco.

"Malfoy, what have you done to me?" she moaned.

"Nothing you didn't beg me for," said Draco.

"Malfoy, how could you do this?"

"It was easy really," said Draco. "It took some energy, though. But then, I've always had plenty."

"Malfoy! How could anything like this have happened?"

"Well, when a boy and a girl fancy each other very, very much—"

"You—you- you know what I'm talking about!" exclaimed Ginny, fire beginning to enter her eyes. How could he be so careless, so amused, so flippant about the entire thing?

Draco sat up, stretching. Oh, damn him, thought Ginny again. The move did such interesting things to his half-exposed abdominal muscles, and they were in such very good shape. "Don't fret, Weasley. Once you told me this was the first time you'd ever done anything along these lines, I was very careful indeed."

Ooh! That's it! Ginny scrambled off the bed. "Draco Malfoy, I'm going to tell my brothers on you!"

Draco looked alarmed. "Uh… wait a moment. Does that include the one who runs Weasley's Wizard Wheezes?"

"Yes! That includes George!"

"Er—"

"And the one who breeds dragons?"

"Yes! Charlie will set fire-breathing Hungarian Horntails on you!"

"And the gingery-haired one who was at Hogwarts with us? Would he come round and allow all my neighbors to see him?"

"Ron?" Ginny was rather confused. "Yes, but I don't see why—"

"All right, all right," Draco said hurriedly. "Look, Weasley, I was just taking the mickey out of you a bit. I swear that's all it was."

Ginny's eyes narrowed. "I don't believe you."

"It's true. It was all a joke. Nothing happened between us last night."

"Then what about everything you just said?"

"Exactly what do you mean?" he asked, pushing back the covers and starting to get out of bed. Draco was wearing exquisitely tailored pale pink pyjamas with gray piping, she saw. They probably cost more than every piece of clothing she owned put together. In fact, they probably cost more than every piece of clothing she had ever owned put together. And how on earth can he pull off wearing pink pyjamas without looking the least bit gay? Shouldn't a blond, smooth-chested pretty-boy in pink pyjamas with professionally manicured fingernails make Ian McKellan seem positively butch by comparison? But Draco still manages to look utterly and heavenly heterosexual. How does he bdo/b it? Ginny tried to peer surreptitiously at Draco as he bent over. Could it be something about that remarkably well-muscled arse of his? No, no… that ought to make him look even more gay, if anything…oh, what am I thinking and why am I thinking it!

She glared at him. "What about no cherry flavoring, and begging, and boys and girls, and you know what I'm talking about, Malfoy!"

He raised one eyebrow in a way that filled her with the sudden fear that he was perfectly aware she'd been staring at his arse. "Come on, Weasley. I'll explain over coffee. You might be a bit more capable of absorbing explanations then."

Ginny sat at the inlaid wooden table in the breakfast nook, her arms crossed, a mutinous expression on her face. Colin would probably have expired in ecstasy at the sheer quality of the interior decorating in Draco's flat, she reflected. If she'd thought about it at all (which she hadn't, of course, as she sternly reminded her wayward brain over and over again,) she would have imagined Draco's flat in one of two ways. It might be an exact copy of the intimidating, cold elegance that doubtless reigned in Malfoy Manor, where everything was Louis the XIVth furniture, or whichever king was the most expensive, priceless paintings, crystal chandeliers, instruments of torture in the dungeons, and house-elf heads on the walls. Or on the other hand, it could be a torrid lust nest of red shag carpet, paintings of reclining nude elves on velvet, revolving heart-shaped beds, and cabinets filled with dubious leather and latex items. She blushed to remember either option now. Any Malfoy was far too classy for the second scenario. And what would be the point of the first? Draco had already grown up that way; he'd have no need to recreate it. All he'd have to do would be to go home if he wanted to see it again. Although…

Ginny frowned. What had happened to Malfoy Manor? She supposed that Draco must have been able to keep it as part of the terms of the court case he'd won under the Wizengamot, but did that mean that he actually ever went there anymore? Did anyone live there, besides maybe a caretaker? What about his mother; what had happened to her? Ginny had never even heard about that. Of course, Draco's father had died, everyone knew that. Lucius Malfoy… As always, Ginny shuddered at the thought of him, and she didn't know why. There was something new, an image, a single flash of white hair and mad eyes in the moonlight, and a grating voice speaking to her… a nightmare… She shivered deeply.

"Cold, Weasley?" asked Draco's voice. He handed her a little cup. She sipped at perfectly made espresso and peered into the shiny kitchen behind him. Even though a crack in the door, she could see that it was equipped with a variety of small appliances so intimidating that she quickly looked away again.

"No," she said. "You've got a lot of explaining to do, Malfoy."

He looked at her over his cup. "Are you always so delightful the morning after?"

She glared at him.

"You're no fun at all," said Draco. "Fine. I wasn't about to leave you to Blaise Zabini's tender mercies last night, so I took you home instead."

"Very noble of you, I'm sure. Then why did I wake up at your flat instead of mine?"

"I'm getting to that. As I approached your… er… charming residence, I realized that your roommate was entertaining company in the living room—"

"Luna has a boyfriend?" Ginny exclaimed. "I had no idea!"

"Yes, well, I'm sure that the two of you are normally privy to every intimate secret about each other's inner lives," said Draco. "Anyway, far be it from me to spoil anyone's chance of getting lucky. Also, you were singing the Chudley Cannons' Fight Song far too loudly for my taste, and I couldn't perform a Silencing spell on you until we'd got back into the car. By that time, you'd fallen asleep." Draco shrugged. "Taking you back to my flat and letting you sleep it off seemed to be the only thing to do."

Ginny looked at him suspiciously. The story had too many potential holes in it, if you asked her. "So nothing happened."

"Other than you snoring like a buzzsaw, no."

"Where did you sleep?"

"In the spare bedroom."

"Why were you in the same bed when I woke up, then?"

"Because the opportunity to tease you was just too splendid to pass up," said Draco. "Care for a cinnamon scone?"

Ginny longed to say no, but her stomach growled at that precise moment. "Okay," she said between bites, "but then what about 'that's not what you were saying last night'?"

"You didn't ask where your wand was last night," said Draco.

"Oh," said Ginny. "What about 'I didn't do anything you didn't want'?"

"You'd have wanted me to take you back to my flat and let you sleep chastely in my bed rather than lie about in the street, right?"

"I suppose," said Ginny ungraciously. "What about 'nothing you didn't beg me for'?"

"Ah… better not to get into that one," said Draco. "Let's just say that you did ask me to take you back to your flat, Weasley. You did say you'd never been so dead drunk, nor had you thrown up on anyone before, so I was awfully careful with you. And it's certainly true that when a boy and a girl fancy each other very, very much—well, if your mum didn't explain that to you, I certainly won't. It isn't my fault that Hogwarts didn't have compulsory sexual education."

"That's all very well," said Ginny, "but—but—what about 'no cherry flavoring'?"

"There isn't any," said Draco.

He was giving her a knowing look. Oh, she was absolutely sure of it. She could feel her face burning.

"Nothing at all happened between us, Weasley," he said gently. "Honestly, do you think I'd shag a girl so drunk that I'd know she wouldn't recall a single one of my awe-inspiring skills the next morning? Not very gratifying to my ego, wouldn't you say?"

"No," sighed Ginny. "I don't think you would." And she didn't. True, she'd pictured Draco Malfoy engaged in every evil and Death Eater-y activity under the sun, although it all seemed rather ridiculous this morning, even if he really was under investigation again. Death Eaters weren't chatty, and they didn't serve espresso while wearing pink pyjamas. But even if her worst fears of puppy-killing and virgin-sacrificing on Draco's part were true, Ginny knew deep down that he had done nothing the night before to disqualify her for the latter category. She felt instinctively, at a level deeper than thought, that there were lines he would never cross. And besides…

She remembered that night in the cottage near Lyme Bay, when she had touched Draco while he innocently slept on the sofa, unaware that she was shamelessly molesting him. She shifted position discreetly in the hard kitchen chair. No, she didn't feel the least bit sore…

All doubts were now removed from her mind, instantly and permanently. They hadn't done a thing.

"I hope you realize that you've made me miss my tennis game," said Draco. "Blaise won't be happy with me, for more reasons than one, not that I particularly care—but then, I've got other appointments today as well. "

Ginny sighed. I ought to have known. I'll bet he has other appointments, all right. Draco was surely about to shove her out the door so that he could usher in one of his real girlfriends, the ones that he actually did shag. She wasn't much of a substitute. Not that she wanted to be. She pushed back her chair.

"Ugh," she said, looking down at her wrinkly clothes. Her tight blue satin blouse hadn't worn well at all from the night before.

"I would have taken that off you, and cleaned you up rather better than I did," said Draco, "but you have to admit, Weasley, that if you'd woken up in a spare pair of my pyjamas, it would have been exceptionally hard to avoid getting the wrong impression."

As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. She tried brushing the strange stains off. The attempt was not successful.

"I'll lend you a sweater," said Draco.

Ginny would have liked to have refused, but the idea of going outside in her current state was far from appealing. "Fine," she said. "If any of your neighbors see me, I don't want them to think that I'm not up to your usual standard, Malfoy."

"Well, you said it, not me," he said, rummaging in a closet.

She glanced round his flat in sheer embarrassment, and so that if he looked up, she wouldn't have to meet his eyes. Everything she could see was understated elegance and classic lines and Impressionist paintings, inlaid, hand-polished wooden floors, and, interestingly enough, a full array of expensive Muggle electronics. And she could get no clear idea of how large this flat actually was. Peeping out one of the windows, she saw that it was a penthouse. It had to be right up to the standard of any of the other Malfoy properties, Ginny realized, except that it was surely in a very different style. Everything was flawlessly clean and neat.

"Do you have house-elves around here somewhere to do all the work?" she blurted.

"Of course," he said, his voice muffled. "Naturally, they don't live here, but they come in at least twice a week. More often, if I have parties or visitors."

"Oh." Far be it from a Malfoy to lift a finger. I should have known. And visitors! I can just imagine what kind of visitors those are. Ginny kept looking around the front room. Then her eye was caught by something strange. Two wooden crates sat in the entryway. They seemed so out of place that she couldn't stop looking at them. They were like cardboard boxes plopped down smack in the middle of the formal dining room at Malfoy Manor itself.

"Still unpacking, Malfoy?" she asked.

"Whatever do you mean?" He straightened up, a blue sweater in one hand. It was clearly one of his, and Ginny breathed a silent sigh of relief. Even though it was going to be much too big on her, she'd been afraid that it would turn out to be something that one of his castoff girlfriends had left. She'd die before wearing that.

She jerked a thumb towards the entryway. "Those crates."

For just the briefest instant, Draco froze. An expression flashed across his face, so quickly that Ginny couldn't begin to decipher it. Then he laughed. "Blaise left them here a couple of days ago. I'm still pestering him to pick them up. They don't exactly add to the décor, do they?"

"Why don't you have them delivered to him by owl?" asked Ginny.

"I ought to," said Draco. "I keep forgetting. Silly of me. Why don't you put this sweater on?" He dropped it over her head so that she could see nothing. When the room came back into focus, she had been turned round the other way and was facing him.

"What's in them?" asked Ginny.

"What's in what?" asked Draco, starting to button the sweater for her. Were his hands lingering just a little too long at her waist?

"Uh… um…" Ginny shook her head to clear it. "What's in the crates? I saw the Lyme Regis stamp on them. I thought it might be fossils. Ammonites, maybe."

"I don't have the least idea,' said Draco. "The gods only know what Blaise might keep in a crate. It's certainly not important. Forget about it, Weasley." His hands moved up to work on the upper buttons. She pulled away slightly. She would not, could not, allow Draco to have this effect on her.

"I never got to see any of the ammonites," she said. "Maybe Blaise would show me some."

Draco's face darkened. "Zabini wants to show you something, all right. But if you think his plans include bloody ammonite fossils—" He stopped and took a deep breath. "I wasn't about to allow him to take you home, Weasley," he said, his voice thick with some emotion she couldn't name. "And that's why."

"Blaise wouldn't have done anything to me," said Ginny. "No more than you did, Malfoy."

"Oh, so it's Blaise now? Let me tell you, Weasley, you don't know him very well. He shags amoebas. He shags slime molds," said Draco. "He's been rumored to make serious attempts at chatting up examples of primordial soup. And if he'd got his hands on you last night, dead drunk, wearing that skin-tight satin blouse, falling over yourself to prove how willing you were, begging for it—you'd have taken anyone last night, any man at all-"

Ginny gasped. "Malfoy, what the fuck are you saying? What happened? What did I say? What did I do?"

"Nothing," muttered Draco. "Nothing at all, because I didn't let you do anything."

"Malfoy-"

"You said the things that drunk girls say, all right? And you tried to… well, never mind. It was no more than that."

"You'd better tell me," said Ginny, her eyes flashing.

"You want me to be blunt, then?" demanded Draco. "Fine. I will. When girls get thoroughly pissed, they'll sometimes ask some random man or other to have sex with them. It doesn't mean they really want the event to take place, and they'd sincerely regret it in the morning. They're not choosy. The offer is made to any man who happens to be at hand. The sober party of the two has the obligation to do what he can to avoid the entire situation. Some men live up to that responsibility, and some don't. I certainly always have, and that's what I did."

"You mean… me.. and you… last night… that's what really… you mean I… oh.. Oh, gods. Oh, no."

Draco didn't answer her, but he didn't need to, thought Ginny. Is it possible to actually sink through this floor? But we're in the penthouse. I'd have to sink through all of Draco's neighbors' floors too, and they'd all see me, and they'd know exactly what I'd been doing with him.

"I was trying to spare you all the gory details, Weasley," said Draco, "but you forced me to a full confession."

"Sorry," mumbled Ginny. "I didn't know… I suppose I should thank… I mean, you could have, and you didn't, I didn't understand that I actually… I mean, that I did, that I said…oh, I wish, I wish I'd never asked, but I just didn't know… " Finally, she had the good sense to shut up. She could see herself reflected in a hall mirror out of the corner of her eye, and her entire head looked like it had been dipped in a bucket of red paint. She could also see the two wooden crates, but they no longer seemed the tiniest bit important, to say the least.

"Two o'clock and all's well, except that you're both lazy as hell," chirped the cuckoo clock.

"Oh, dear Loki!" gasped Ginny. "I forgot! I completely forgot!"

Draco raised an eyebrow. "The middle-class morals instilled into you by your mother? It's a bit late now, Weasley. You've spent the night in a man's flat. Doesn't that fact alone invalidate the white wedding with Potter?"

"I haven't even seen him in about two years, and I send back all his owls, I'll have you know! Oh, I can't believe I forgot," groaned Ginny. "I'm going to be late, I'm late already, where are my shoes?"

"You could borrow some of mine, I suppose. At this rate, you might as well begin ransacking my entire wardrobe. Mind telling me what you're late for?"

"Yes, and I could shuffle about with canoes on my feet too, Malfoy," said Ginny. "Oh, my shoes, my shoes… there they are…" She began wedging them on frantically.

"You're putting them on the wrong feet," Draco pointed out.

"The appointment was for two-ten. I'll never make it. Never. Oh fuck, I'll be stuck at Sans and Serif forever. I'll be setting type when I'm a hundred and ten years old. Oh, this is horrible."

"All of your hair is sticking straight up," said Draco. "It's not a flattering look."

"I had a rubber band somewhere…" Ginny began turning out her pockets frantically.

"You're making it worse." Draco took her hands. "Whatever are you getting so frantic about?"

The heat of his skin was scorching on hers. She snatched her fingers away. "Some people do things they care about, that matter to them," she said tightly. "The gods only know what you do with your time, Malfoy—you play tennis and lounge about and live a life of leisure, I suppose—but I'm an artist, and if I don't succeed in placing my art in galleries, then I'll be stuck working for others all my life. I have an appointment with a gallery owner in ten minutes and I forgot all about it and I'm going to miss it, and—"

And it's all your fault, she almost added. She bit her tongue. Draco Malfoy might be at fault for a lot of things, but the deep vein of fairness in Ginny Weasley couldn't allow her to blame him for this. Her art had been slipping through her fingers in recent months, more and more, and deep down, she knew that it was nobody's fault but her own.

But there was no time to think about that now. She took a quick look in the hall mirror again. "My hair, my hair," she groaned. A man's gray fedora came down on her head.

"Rather a nice look," said Draco. "Retro Annie Hall, don't you think?"

"I'm sure it is," said Ginny, trying to sound assured when she had absolutely no idea what he meant. She hated to admit it, but between Draco's elegant hat and Draco's expensive sweater, she actually looked remarkably well-dressed.

"I have to get out of here now," she informed him.

"Then why don't you?" he asked.

There really wasn't any answer to that question, she realized. Except that she didn't want to. Except that she wanted to keep standing in the entryway of his flat,looking at him, trying to figure out the answer to a riddle that she didn't know she'd even asked, trying to recapture the last fragments of a dream that had long slipped away from her.

-rain, wind, moonlight, a crackling fire. Dark chocolate. We can't do this. Fever and desire. I'll make you forget Marie. Don't you want that. Yes, Ginny. Yes. He looked at her as if he'd look through her and into her soul, more deeply than anyone had ever looked into her before-

Draco was looking at her now, a very faint smile on his lips, his hands in his pockets. His eyes were like silvery mirrors that reflected everything, revealing nothing. Ginny shook her head.

"I need to leave," she said, as haughtily as she could, and then she flounced out into the corridor. Her exit was marred only slightly by tripping over the edge of one of the crates. But Ginny didn't even notice, because, of course, she'd forgotten all about them.


	8. What Ginny Overheard

A/N: Thanks to the all the reviewers!

Eavesdroppers often overhear highly entertaining and instructive things.

- Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind

"Unacceptable," said Zenobia Smith, tapping her thin Gauloise against a crystal ashtray.

"What?" said Ginny.

"I believe that you heard what I said. However, if it is necessary to repeat the word, I will do so," said the gallery owner of Bas-Bleu. Unacceptable. Not that I suppose it makes a great deal of difference to you now."

What the hell is she talking about? I suppose she's just being a bitch. Well, what else could I expect from Zacharias Smith's sister, after all. Ginny smiled as sweetly as she could. "Would you mind telling me why?"

"Not at all."

Well, ask a stupid question… thought Ginny.

Zenobia took another drag on the French cigarette, and walked round the statuette of a woman reaching for the sky, displayed on a small pedestal. Ginny had named it Victory. She had rather a sinking feeling now that it might have been a somewhat unfortunate name.

"You've seen fit to give theis piece the appellation, 'Victory,'" said Sophie in her cut-glass accent. "I see nothing of the sort in it."

I knew it. "Would you care to elaborate?" asked Ginny politely. At least, she hoped that she sounded polite.

"Actually, I find that I would, not that I suppose the opinion of one gallery owner means much to you at this point." said Zenobia. She examined the piece critically. The smoke curled up around her glossy, short dark hair. "Your talent is undeniable, Miss Weasley. But you are settling for superficiality. Your work is cheap and sentimental. You must learn to dig deeper, and to see beyond the obvious. You must develop profound themes. 'Victory'- " She flicked a finger in the direction of the little statue, contemptuously. "I suppose that this was inspired by the end of the war? The victory of the wizarding world?"

Ginny flushed guiltily. "Well, yes. There's nothing wrong with that."

"In itself, no. But you might as well make mass-manufactured plastic copies of this piece and sell them at gift shop outside the War Memorial in the Ministry, whenever that's finally finished," Zenobia said dismissively. "Or I suppose it might very well do for part of the sculpture-in-the-round itself. The Ministry's artistic standards will not be high."

"You're entitled to your opinion, Miss Smith," said Ginny, trying very hard not to imagine strands of glossy black hair all over the floor.

"Yes, I am," said Zenobia. She gave Ginny a long, measuring look. "But I will say that you have been very, very clever in practicing art of a sort, clearly."

"I don't have the least idea what you mean," said Ginny through gritted teeth. "but there are other galleries, you know. I think I could do better with one of them."

"I'm quite sure you could." Zenobia looked at her through narrowed eyes. "I'm not entirely sure why you even bothered to come down here yourself, fifteen minutes late, I might add, rather than sending a house-elf—"

"Miss Smith, let's get something straight here. For your information, the salary of a junior graphic designer at Sans and Serif wouldn't even cover one ear of a house-elf—" said Ginny, but Zenobia overrode her.

"You'll have far better luck in utilizing your … social connections, shall we say… with any of them. But if you seriously thought that sort of thing would impress me, you are very wrong. Your work must stand on its own."

"Social connections?" asked Ginny, thoroughly confused.

Zenobia gave a mirthless little laugh. "I can only say, Miss Weasley, that I wish I had your press agent."

"What on earth are you talking about?" Ginny demanded.

The other woman gave her a long, level look. "I would have more respect for you if you would only be honest about what you are doing. As it is, I will ask you to leave my gallery. Our interview is at an end."

"What?" exclaimed Ginny.

"Just as soon as your artwork has been wrapped and prepared for your transport owl to take with you."

"I don't have a transp—"

"And please leave out the back entrance, if you don't mind terribly. Or even if you do."

"Just who the fuck do you think you are—" There didn't seem much point in being polite anymore, thought Ginny. Also, she was talking to empty air. The door had slammed in her face.

The gallery assistant walked in and patted Ginny on the back. "Zenobia's such a hissy little bitch sometimes," he said in confiding tones. "Don't let her get to you. I'd say she's jealous, except that she chases for the other team. Perhaps she feels a bit of the bite of the green-eyed monster anyway. How could she help it?" He winked at her. "Not as much as I do, of course. You're a lucky girl."

"Um… thanks, uh…" Ginny cudgeled her brains for his name. He certainly seemed to know her.

"Silver frog Patronus? Fought beside you at the Battle of Hogwarts? That ring any bells?"

"Tony Goldstein!" exclaimed Ginny joyfully, hugging her old Dumbledore's Army mate from Hogwarts.

"I thought I was going to have to remind you about the time I hexed Malfoy into a big slug on the Hogwarts Express at the end of fifth year. Although he's improved a bit since then, hasn't he?" Tony grinned slyly.

"Maybe," Ginny said primly. "I wouldn't know."

"Come on, now. It's out in the open. And you can't fool me."

"What do you mean?"

He flipped her ponytail up playfully.

"Don't ever cut it, remember?"

"Oh!" Ginny suddenly recalled a smiling face seen through a haze of scotch and sodas the night before. Sweet Circe, is every male I know actually gay? "You were at Illusions. I suppose that means…"

"It means I really am jealous, but I'll survive," said Tony. "I'm having your artwork sent to your flat, by the way. Give my love to Luna."

"Thanks… but why do you keep saying that you're jealous?"

He nudged her lightly in the ribs. "Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, Gin. By the way, is it true what they say?"

"Is what true? And who says it?"

"I mean, I'm not a size queen myself, but I can't help but be curious… we all are, because nobody's ever had a chance to confirm the rumors. I mean, Blaise makes all those claims about the times he supposedly saw him starkers when they used to swim in the private lakes at the manor when they were both lads back at school, but everybody knows that Blaise can't be trusted as far as he can be thrown with a dragon tied on-"

"Tony, what on earth are you rabbiting on about?"

"Playing coy? Okay, Ginny. My lips are sealed. Mum's the word. You're the only one who knows the truth about the great big dragon, and if you want to keep it that way…" Tony winked at her.

"Argh!" Ginny sank her head in her hands. "Look, if you're talking about Draco Malfoy, I have nothing to do with him."

"Of course you don't. By the way, sweetheart," said Tony, "feel free to leave through the front door. I think you ought to flash Zenobia and all her important customers on your way out. Although I doubt any of them deserve the cheap thrill. Ta."

They were all mad, Ginny decided. Stark raving mad. Maybe she should go out the back door. She hesitated, walking up to the door to the corridor that led to the main gallery. Just the thought of the sour look on Zenobia Smith's face when she saw her marching through it made the entire thing worthwhile. She peered through the window in the door. Not much point in marching through if she isn't even there…

Astoria Greengrass was standing in front of a Paul Klee painting, looking at it with a bored expression on her horselike face. She pushed back a strand of fair hair, and Ginny saw the flash of a gold bracelet on her slender wrist. Her nails were perfectly manicured. Ginny wondered if she went to the same manicurist that Draco did. Maybe they had appointments together, one right after the other.

"I don't really care for it," said Astoria in a nasal voice.

"Somehow, I am not surprised," said Zenobia crisply.

"I don't know why you'd say that."

"It might have something to do with the fact that you 'did not care for,' as you put it, any of the other nine hundred and eighty-four artistic styles from various eras and continents that I have shown you over the past three months. It hardly seemed likely that the Bauhaus school would please you."

"The colours wouldn't match my dining room," said Astoria.

"Then I suggest that you try a new coat of paint for the walls, Miss Greengrass. Or perhaps paintings of Elvis Presley on black velvet. Those just might meet your standard of artistic appreciation, although on reflection, I believe they would still far exceed it."

Astoria gasped. "Well, I never!"

"And you never will," said Zenobia. "Goodbye, Miss Greengrass. If I could request the return of all the time I have spent in futile attempts to improve your artistic taste over the past months of my existence, rest assured that I would do so."

"I'll never set foot in this tacky gallery again," blustered Astoria. "And I'll make sure all my friends stay away as well."

"You may do exactly as you please, Miss Greengrass, but if I were you, I should keep better track of my... shall we say… friends. My assistant will show you out."

Astoria gave the owner a confused look and flounced out, and Ginny hid a smile. She could almost see herself having a grudging respect for Zenobia Smith. Someday. Maybe. Possibly after tearing just a few hairs out of her head for what she'd said about Victory.

But the idea of leaving through the front door didn't seem very appealing anymore. She could see Astoria pacing down the sidewalk, none too quickly. Now she was turning round and coming back Now she was pausing and glancing down at a newspaper rack filled with copies of the Daily Prophet. Now she was picking up a Sunday afternoon edition and glaring at it. Apparently, it was going to be the rear entrance after all. Ginny went down a winding little corridor, got lost in a warren of broom closets and little halls for a ridiculous amount of time, and finally found a small door. She got up on tiptoes and peered through the tiny window. Hopefully, it led to the alley, but she'd gotten so lost that she no longer had any clear idea where she was.

Her heart skipped a beat. Draco was standing with his back against the wall, his profile to her.

Ginny scrambled back. What the fuck was he doing there? Did he somehow know that she was there? Had he… oh, this is completely mad… but did he follow me? His head turned toward the door, and he looked up. In another second, their eyes would meet, and Ginny had the sudden, illogical thought that he already knew she was there, and that he would speak to her. There was a strangely serious look on his face, and at the thought of what he might say to her now, some sort of emotion leapt up in her chest, or maybe it was just a physical sensation, tied up with a rush of memories from the morning. His tousled blond head next to her in bed, his sleepy smile, his bare chest beneath a pink pyjama top, his big hands holding a cup of espresso across a kitchen table. His low, drawling voice. The touch of those hands at her waist when he buttoned the borrowed sweater around her. The chocolately smell of him when he leaned in close. Gods, but how had she become so entangled with all of these little things in such a short time, so entranced, so hopelessly fallen under his carelessly cast spell, when she knew perfectly well that he didn't care a thing about her? Ginny groaned under her breath. Colin's right. I shouldn't be on the same continent with Draco Malfoy! But… but still, she couldn't make herself believe everything that Colin had said, that Draco was set on the same path of Death Eater-dom as he'd been in his past, no matter what the Ministry might think. That part just couldn't be true-

Smack!

That was when Ginny decided once and for all that Draco Malfoy did indeed strangle puppies and cackle evilly while dragging virgins away to be sacrificed to some new Dark Lord or other in the service of the Pureblood Cause. It was a very good thing that the attempt to break the no-sex curse with him hadn't got very far, she decided. It wouldn't have worked out anyway. He'd have hauled me off by the hair to the dungeons of Malfoy Manor before we got very far into the deflowering process, Ginny thought glumly. Although he'd undoubtedly been lying when he'd claimed that she'd shamelessly begged him to help her with the entire project, because she clearly never, ever would have made such an offer in this universe or any other! It had all been just another attempt on Draco's part to prop up his monstrously overinflated ego, that pompous, pastel-wearing, excruciatingly pretty, maddeningly masculine, hatefully heterosexual prat—

Astoria Greengrass pulled her manicured hand back from slapping Draco across the face. He winced slightly.

"Asta! Whatever was that for?"

"You promised to meet me last night at L'Ibris. We had reservations at nine-thirty, and I sat there like a fool for an hour! That's what that was for."

"Well, I didn't keep you waiting that long today, did I?" Draco seemed to recover his composure very quickly, thought Ginny, even though he had a perfect red handprint on his face.

"Ten minutes," she snapped. "And it was ten minutes too long, because I don't wait at all, for anyone. And I can't believe I had to come round to the alleyway."

"You'll wait for me," said Draco.

"That's what you think," said Astoria.

I shouldn't be here, thought Ginny. I don't want to see this. I ought to leave.

"I don't think. I know. And there's a very good reason to meet here," said Draco. "We really can't be seen just now, and anywhere else would have been much too public."

Astoria was standing in the alleyway, holding herself rigidly away from the dirty brick walls, a folded copy of the Daily Prophet in one hand. Her back was to Ginny, and she was standing very close. Ginny could see every detail of the other woman's expensive beige linen suit and glossy upswept hair, and she knew that she'd be able to hear every word. She dropped into a crouch and tried not to breathe too loudly. Wild nundus could not have dragged her away.

Astoria shook her head. "You don't always seem to care so much about not being seen in public!"

"Right, right. I don't know what you're on about, but I've got something important to tell you, so—"

"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about, Draco. Don't think you can get round me this time."

"Oh, come on, Asta. If this is about last night, I had some important business, and it came up at the last moment."

"I'll just bet it did."

"Don't fuss at me. I'll send you something nice," Draco said indifferently.

The blonde woman's eyes glittered briefly. "Really? How nice?"

"Something from Ostentatia's Jeweler's, maybe. Just pop over there and pick it out. Tell them to send me the bill."

"That might do the trick." Astoria looked at him coolly. "But it'll need to be very nice indeed. Draco, I just don't care to be made a fool of. If you could only be discreet about this sort of thing, I wouldn't mind. But you weren't the least bit discreet."

"Discreet,of course. Whatever." Draco waved a hand impatiently. Ginny had to stuff a hand in her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. "Damn it, Astoria, I don't have time for this sort of thing right now, whatever it is," he went on." Forget it, can't you? I've got something bloody important to tell you."

"As important as you making a fool out of me in front of everyone we know?" Astoria demanded. "All of my friends will see this; they've already seen it, I'm sure. The gallery owner saw it—she made a snide little comment, which only makes sense to me now! I'll never be able to hold my head up again."

"I think you'll manage," said Draco. "Now, listen to me, Asta—"

"No," said Astoria. "You're going to listen to me, Draco Malfoy."

Draco gave a long, weary sigh. "All right; if even an offer of jewelry won't put it out of your mind, then I suppose it'll be quicker to just get it out of the way, whatever it is. What are you talking about, Asta?"

"You know what I'm talking about," Astoria said icily, "and I'd like to hear your explanation for it, Draco."

Oh, this should be good, thought Ginny. Of course, I'd like to hear it too, especially because I don't have the faintest idea what she's on about either.

"My explanation for what?" asked Draco.

Astoria opened the Daily Prophet and stabbed her finger into the front of the social pages. "This! This article by Rita Skeeter!"

Draco didn't even bother to glance down at it. "Some story or other naming me as a guilty party in a society scandal, I suppose? I'm hardly responsible for whatever trash might have been spewed out by the Skeeter woman and printed in that filthy rag. There's your explanation. Can we move on now?"

"No, we can't," snapped Astoria. "What about you and your little redhead, Draco? What about Ginny Weasley?"

Draco sucked in his breath. It was as if this was the very time he'd actually listened to anything Astoria said since the beginning of the conversation, thought Ginny, and the first time he'd really looked at her since the second she'd walked up to him, including when she'd slapped him across the face. "What the hell is this, Astoria?" he demanded.

"Read it for yourself, Draco," she said, shoving it into his hand. Ginny moved back and stood up very slowly, so that she was reading over Draco's shoulder and could clearly see every word of the article.

Malfoy Prince and Weasley Pauper: A Match Made In Heaven, Or Just the Back of His Muggle Mercedes?

By Rita Skeeter.


	9. Rita Skeeter's Scandalous Story

A/N: Thanks to the all the reviewers!

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

There were many well-kept secrets about Ginny Weasley, from her shameful love of playing Muggle easy listening radio stations while quite alone at home (although once caught by Luna, who was sworn to secrecy), to her furtive habit of biting her toenails in the bathtub, to the recurrent dream when she was thirteen years old involving Draco Malfoy holding out a giant Popsicle to her on a very long stick and inviting her to take a good lengthy lick. One of the less scandalous, however, was that her reading speed far exceeded Hermione Granger's. Ginny's tally of completed books never stacked up to Hermione's simply because her stock of patience had an unfortunate tendency to run very low, and whenever this happened, she had a habit of abandoning the book and then running out into the apple orchard behind the burrow to climb a tree and getting stuck in the upper branches, stealing her brothers' broomsticks, or pestering them to teach her illegal spells until they locked her in a cupboard. However, she could read very quickly when she wanted to. She could certainly have zipped through Rita Skeeter's rather purple prose, and she had a feeling that Draco could have done so as well. But she found herself reading and rereading the paragraphs now, unable to tear her eyes away from the unfolding horror, and luckily—or unluckily- Draco seemed to be doing the same thing.

The delicious Draco, heir to untold Malfoy millions, and the disheveled Ginny, youngest daughter of the famed yet poverty-stricken Weasleys and discarded ex of war hero Harry Potter, were caught in quite the compromising position last night whilst he whisked her home from Illusions Emporium for Those of Alternate Preferences, a hothothot London nightspot. Apparently, both Draco and Ginny do bat for the same team, though. Or at least they were on quite the winning streak Saturday night, as our intrepid photographer Dennis Creevey proved.

If Colin doesn't kill Dennis for me, Ginny decided, then I will. What's a spot of fratricide between friends? It was impossible to stop reading the article as it would have been to pull her gaze away from a train wreck on the Hogwarts Express, so she returned to it.

Draco looks particularly delectable in this photo, doesn't he? Do you think he's wearing boxers or briefs beneath those perfectly cut trousers? Or maybe nothing at all? Be sure to vote in the poll below, girls! And here's a tip for the blushing Ginevra: if you want to impress your swoonworthy swain with your maidenly modesty, don't stick your tongue so far down his throat that you'll likely never get it back again. So much for that white wedding with Harry, Gin! Not that the marvelous Malfoy doth seem to protest too much, does he? Based on interviews with the wizard and witch in the street, we also have some speculations on exactly what occurred once he got her back to his flat.

"Don't think Malfoy waited that long, did he? Shagged the girl the moment he threw her into the back seat, and good for 'im, innit?" leers Sluggy McHeep of Slopsgloth Lane. 'Wish I'd got 'old of her meself. I'd have shown her what for."

A number of speculations on said imagined activities followed. But we're a family newspaper, so we can't reprint them. Shame on you, Sluggy! You're a naughty, naughty man.

"Ginevra Weasley looks like a right little tart, that's what I say," was the opinion of Margaret Murgatroyd of Primsley Place. "I'm quite sure she did dreadful, unspeakable, nasty dirty slippery chocolatey things with that sinfully sinister muscly-arsed Malfoy man—ahem, I mean, that dear, sweet boy, who isn't the least bit like all the other evil Malfoys. Shameful it is, the way modern girls go about like that, sticking their tongues down innocent boys' throats and wiggling their bums in their shocked faces and forcing their pure minds to think about sex, and shamelessly seducing them by sticking their ta-tas in tight satin blouses and no decent undergarments into the angelic lads' naughty bits. Does that Weasley girl's mother know what she's up to? Now in my day, we went about in robes made from burlap sacks, and we liked it that way—"

Ginny groaned inwardly. Mum really does know! She's read the paper! I wonder if I could find every copy and burn it! But it's too late now. It's in the official Ministry database already. Oh, this is the worst thing, the absolute worst thing ever.

But maybe the photograph wasn't as bad as Rita Skeeter claimed, Ginny thought hopefully. Maybe it was all an exaggeration.

Draco flipped the page. Ginny immediately decided that she might need to pretend that she had died in a tragic splinching accident as a result of trying to Apparate while under the influence of too many nontuple espressos. Several condolence owls would have to be sent to her family, of course. Surely that would convince Molly Weasley that she actually was dead, and in that case, she wouldn't have to hear anything more about that photograph, ever again. Unless Mum starts holding séances specifically for the purpose of sending Afterlife Howlers. I wouldn't put it past her an inch. Well, that idea's right out, then. I'll have to think of something else, and clearly, I bwill/b have to come up with something, because... oh, fuck, no, don't tell me I was actually doing bthat/b…

But Dennis Creevey's telephoto lens had caught it all. Ginny was leaning up against Draco's shiny black Mercedes. One of her legs was hitched up round his hip, she was pulling his blond head down to hers, and she was kissing him fiercely. It really did look like she was trying to devour him whole, she thought. Rita Skeeter had to get points for accuracy, at least. She was pressing her chest up against him, too, and the top buttons of her blouse had all come undone. Half of her breasts were exposed. So that part of the story was true too. And… oh, gods, why did wizarding photographs have to move? She was grinding her hips against him!

"This is a fake," she groaned under her breath. "Right?"

No, the Ginny-in-the-photograph mouthed back at her.

"You mean I actually did this last night?" she moaned in a whisper.

Photograph-Ginny nodded vigorously.

Ginny propped her head in her hands. The other Ginny had been there, had seen it, and had experienced everything that she herself now saw. But that was all that the Ginny-in-the-photograph knew.

"So what Draco said was true," she said. "I really did throw myself at him. It wasn't just part of his overinflated ego. Although he does have one… it's not the only overinflated thing he has, either… oh, never mind that… I wish you could actually explain everything that happened, though. But you can't, can you?"

The little grayscale Ginny shrugged. Wizarding photographs don't work that way.

"Tell me about it," sighed Ginny. "I wish I could remember it…"

The photograph-Draco smirked at her. Damn, but I wish I was real! This one kiss is all I can ever get from you. Ah, well, I'd better get everything out of it that I can, then. Mm… maybe I could feel you up a bit as well. We did do that much, right?

Well, I grabbed your hands and planted them firmly on my breasts at one point, admitted the other Ginny. You didn't perhaps remove them as quickly as you might have done.

Close enough, said the other Draco, and the little black-and-white figure returned to his passionate embrace with her own pictured self.

Ginny scowled. Even in a photograph, Draco Malfoy still irritated the hell out of her.

But the blonde woman was whining something or other, so she forced her attention back to the present.

"You weren't exactly fighting off the Weasley tart, Draco," she said in her snippiest voice.

"Don't tell me you're jealous, Asta," said Draco, sounding amused. He laid a hand on her shoulder, lightly. Ginny felt all the blood in her body instantly rush to her skin when she saw that.

Astoria shook his hand off. "Oh—you'd like that, wouldn't you? Or you wouldn't care, which is much more likely—" She broke off. "Draco, how could you have broken a dinner date with me in order to go slumming in some tacky club or other with her? She's nothing; the Weasleys are blood traitors—"

"Lower your voice, Astoria," said Draco. "I shouldn't need to remind you of that."

"I thought you said nobody could overhear us in this alley."

"When it comes to certain things, you can never be too careful."

"I think you're trying to change the subject," hissed Astoria. "Why were you with her, Draco? I'm waiting for you to explain yourself!"

Ginny held her breath.

"I don't explain myself, Astoria," said Draco. "Not to you. Not to anyone."

"How can you say that?" demanded Astoria. "Considering the circumstances—"

"Yes." Draco gave a short, mirthless laugh. "The upcoming Malfoy-Greengrass circumstances."

Astoria took a deep breath. She drew herself up haughtily. "I shouldn't put myself to the trouble of showing jealousy over any of your playthings, Draco," she said. "I suppose I know better than that, really. But we have an image to maintain. You know what's expected of us. Given the circumstances, as I said, I can tell you that Mother and Father certainly won't tolerate such a total lack of discretion on your part. They'll remind you of what you owe them."

Draco's face suddenly darkened, every trace of amusement draining out of it as if a Muggle light switch had suddenly been flipped off. "You don't know the first thing about what I do or don't owe your family, Astoria," he said.

Astoria blinked. For a moment, she looked almost afraid. "I—I just know what I've heard, Draco. That's all."

"And what have you heard?" His voice had dropped into a lower, colder register.

"Nothing. Nothing! I swear, I don't really know anything, Draco."

He scanned Astoria for another moment as if trying to read her, and then something happened to him, so quickly that Ginny's eyes could hardly even catch it. Before she even had time to draw her next breath, he'd changed back into the ironic, amused self she'd first seen standing in line at Madam Lonelyheart's Coffee Lounge, a shiny new Draco Malfoy dressed in pastel colours and smirky smiles and tennis games, the playboy who took all of life lightly and who thoroughly, if not profoundly, enjoyed its pleasures. But she had glimpsed a very different Draco before that moment, however briefly.

Or did I? Did I really see anything at all? Ginny was no longer the least bit sure. Astoria certainly didn't seem to think so. The troubled expression on the blonde woman's face was gone as completely as if it had never been. She just looked sulky and superior and unbearably irritating again.

"I'm fairly sure you've learned whatever you think you know by listening at doors, Astoria," Draco was saying lightly to her now. "Hardly the best way to gain complete information."

"I don't know what else I could have been expected to do when you won't tell me anything," said Astoria, shrugging. "But anyway, it doesn't matter. Keep your little secrets, Draco; I simply don't care. All I care about is that you don't make a fool out of me by flaunting your tarts where Rita Skeeter can write articles about them. Be discreet about it, and save it until well after the wedding."

The wedding! Ginny was petrified.

"As I've been trying to say for the last fifteen minutes, I have desperately important news to tell you, Astoria. And as a matter of fact, it is going to affect our wedding," said Draco.

"What in the world do you mean? The wedding planner's nearly done with the final details, and I've been starting in on plans for redecorating the manor. I can't seem to settle on artwork for the reception rooms, not that I ever plan on returning here to find it." Astoria grimaced.

"I've just learned that I'm under investigation again," said Draco.

"Perhaps I'll try the Sycophantia gallery next," mused Astoria. "It's run by house-elves, and I do think they provide better service."

"The Ministry is reopening my case. The entire agreement I hammered out with the Wizengamot might very well turn out to be null and void."

"And then there's the question of the wedding cake. I don't really care for the old wizarding traditions in this area."

"The Department of Mysteries is coming after me. There's probably a crack team of Aurors hunting me down even as we speak. If they can get away with it, they'll throw me in Azkaban, round up a leftover Dementor, and give me the Kiss before the day's out," said Draco.

"My mother didn't really think that the moving figurines of the goddess Heartha mounting the god Priapus on top of the cake would perhaps exactly strike the right note for the reception…"

"Astoria! Are you listening to me at all?"

"What?" Astoria blinked. "Oh… yes, yes, of course I am. You're to be hunted down, thrown into Azkaban, and Kissed by a leftover Dementor, Draco. Yes, I can see how that might pose a slight problem for our wedding."

Draco glared at her wordlessly, his mouth opening and closing. "A slight problem," he finally repeated.

"Well, yes, a slight problem."

"In what way, do you think?"

Astoria tapped her chin with a finger. "I'm not entirely sure if you could properly recite our wedding vows as a soulless zombie."

Draco turned a bright shade of red from chin to hairline. "No! That's not the problem, you stupid bitch!"

"I don't like to hear you swear, Draco," Astoria said primly.

If such was really the case, thought Ginny, then Astoria had to be remarkably unhappy for the next ninety seconds, because Draco Malfoy unleashed an astounding string of profanities, vulgarities, and references to various bodily functions that would have made all of her brothers collectively blush.

"The problem," Draco said more calmly, after he was apparently through, "is that—well, first of all, the wedding can't take place on its scheduled date, because I've just learned that I have… ah… other obligations."

"Can't take place on its scheduled date?" gasped Astoria.

"How nice," said Draco. "You're able to correctly repeat back what you hear. I was starting to wonder."

"But—but—" She twisted her hands together. "Why? Is it because- What's going to happen to the Malfoy properties, and what about the money? Will the Ministry seize everything after all?"

He smiled sardonically. "I might've guessed that was all that would concern you, Astoria. If it will put your mercenary little mind at ease, the good news is that there's nothing at all to these new charges."

Ginny let out a breath that she hadn't even realized she'd been holding, and she sagged with relief against the wall of the corridor. Nothing to them, nothing to them at all. Draco wasn't guilty of anything. The Ministry was just chasing shadows in this new investigation of him. She didn't even stop to think why she would believe his innocence on his word alone. But…

But I can't go out there and take him in my arms and lay my face against his warm smooth skin and whisper in his ear that I believe him, of course I believe him, and he's being ridiculous, and it's going to be all right, she thought painfully. I can't defend him. I can't tell him that I don't care if he loses all the Malfoy money and every square inch of land they own and he has to sleep in a shoebox on the street, because I couldn't come and share it with him if it did happen. I don't have the right. She does, Astoria Greengrass. They're still going to get married; they'll just be changing the date. They'll have a cake, and a reception, and he'll exchange wedding vows with her…she said so…

Miserably, she pictured the blonde woman in white lace and Draco Malfoy in a black tuxedo, standing next to each other in front of an altar. She looked anemic. He looked scrumptious enough to eat with a spoon.

If anyone present now knows of any reason why this witch and this wizard should not be joined in the vows of pagan matrimony, let her speak now or forever hold her peace…

Me! Me! Memememe! Ginny jumped up and down in a pew, waving her hand wildly. Astoria is a mercenary bitch who only wants Draco for his money! Oh, and probably for his pretty-boy looks and his enormous cock as well. Who wouldn't? But I'd want him if he didn't have a knut to his name, and looked like Gregory Goyle on a bad hair day, and—yes, and even if he had a Quidditch set the size of Harry's! Astoria doesn't care about the things I do. Astoria doesn't even know about Draco's wicked wit, or his razor-sharp mind, or his tender heart, because I know he has one, I just know it…

"Draco, if there's nothing to the charges, then the wedding can simply be rescheduled," said Astoria dismissively.

"I don't think you quite understand," said Draco. "That was the good news."

"It's dreadfully inconvenient, of course, but Mother can always reserve the pagan oak grove for a few months later."

"There's a bit more to it, and it's rather important. My life might hinge on it. Don't you think you could listen to me, Astoria? Just once? For a change?"

"The guests can all be informed of the new date once we settle on it, I suppose. I imagine we'll have to switch the entire design to one based on summer flowers," mused Astoria.

"I did make some sort of attempt to break this to you gently, Astoria. Remember that," said Draco. "On the other hand, you took the news that I might shortly be a soulless zombie with considerable equanimity. Tit for tat, coming right up."

Astoria looked at him rather blankly. "Equa—what?"

"I don't know why I haven't learned by now to never use five-syllable words when speaking to you," said Draco. "Well, let's get this over with. The truly, truly bad news, Astoria—from your point of view, at least- is that the wedding won't be taking place at all. "

"Won't be taking place at all?"

"Is there an echo in this alley?"

"You're joking," said Astoria. She had gone very pale. "You've simply got to be joking, Draco."

"I assure you that I'm not."

"But—but my mother's been planning this for years."

"I can hardly be held responsible for the demented plans your mother hatches in her head." Draco shuddered.

"But we've known since Hogwarts just how well suited we are for each other, how well matched we are to the Cause—"

"Damn it, Astoria, I told you not to talk about that sort of thing where there was any possibility of our being overheard," hissed Draco. "And I shouldn't have to tell you. You should have better sense than that."

"But it's true," Astoria insisted. "And you said yourself that there was nothing to these charges, so why would you even think about not going through with our wedding, Draco?"

Draco was silent for a moment. "I've got my reasons," he said. "Astoria, I told you that there's absolutely no basis to this new investigation, and it's true. But the bad news is that I'm afraid that the Department of Mysteries will never give up as long as they believe there is."

"Why not?" Astoria demanded. "I know you managed to get Beneficium's ear on the Wizengamot's bench—I'm sure Father had something to do with that—"

"As I've already said, Astoria, you don't know what you're talking about," Draco said coldly.

"Well, whatever. The point is that I don't see why the Ministry would keep a new investigation going if there's nothing to investigate, even if the Department of Mysteries is running it this time."

Draco tapped his fingers against his thigh. "Someone else is behind it now."

Astoria looked down at the photograph of Draco and Ginny in the Daily Prophet again. Photograph-Ginny made a rude gesture at her. Astoria glared down, and photograph-Draco put a protective arm around Ginny's little black and white waist, glaring back up out of the picture at Astoria, who recoiled as if she had been slapped.

"And who might that be, Draco?" asked Astoria, dropping the paper.

"Potter," said Draco, after a pause.

"Oh!" Astoria's eyes flashed with malice. "I see. Yes, I think it's all beginning to come together now, isn't it?" She straightened her robes. "Malfoy, I'd feel sorry for you if you weren't such an utter bastard. The Department of Mysteries will be on your perfect arse until the day you die. And don't expect any help from my family this time."

"I don't need their help," said Draco. "I never did. Nor yours, Greengrass."

"Oh, something tells me that you're going to need all the help you can get," said Astoria, giving him a faint, superior smile. "Goodbye, Malfoy."

Her heels clattered on the cobblestones as she left the alleyway, and Draco sagged against the brick wall for a moment, not even glancing after her. Ginny didn't even think about what to do or whether she should do anything, or nothing, or what the most clever thing might be to do, or if this was the stupidest possible thing that she could do. She simply ran out the door, launched herself at Draco, and went into his arms, holding him tightly. For a single second, she felt his hands meet, clasping round her back, and he pressed her close to him. Then he sighed.

"Shite, Weasley, why did you have to do that?"

"Wh-what?" she stammered.

"Let go of me. Get away, go back through the gallery. And hurry the fuck up!" He gave her a gentle push. She started to stumble away from him, but even as he was pushing her, one of his arms seemed to have a mind of its own and kept twining round her and his left hand couldn't quite let go of her waist, and she could hear him groaning miserably.

"Greengrass is right," said an all-too-familiar voice. "You could use all the help you can get, except that it isn't going to do you any good this time. You can't buy your way out of this one, Malfoy."

Ginny's stomach dropped through her feet. She looked up to meet Harry Potter's furious green eyes. He confronted them both, wand drawn, flanked by a team of Aurors closing off the mouth of the alleyway.

Draco dropped Ginny's arm, deliberately extricating himself from her, stepping slightly away. He met Harry's gaze, looking amused. "Oh, look, the gang's all here," he said, looking round the group of Aurors. "Now the party can start."

"I don't know what you're talking about, but I suppose you think you're being clever. Well, I don't really care. I've got you now, Malfoy," Harry said doggedly.

"Yes, yes, and your little Kneazle, too…" Draco raised an eyebrow. "And what do you think you have me for, exactly?"

"We know what happened," said Harry through gritted teeth.

"Oh really? Do tell, then, because I don't know."

"You want to play this game? Fine. There was activity related to former Death Eaters around Lyme Regis last night," said Harry.

"That's a bit vague," said Draco. "Nefarious and ill-defined crimes and misdemeanours. Such an interesting story, I'm sure. But I don't see what it has to do with me."

"Oh, you don't, do you?" said Harry. "We know that one of the Malfoy properties is there. We can put two and two together."

Draco smiled. "Very good, and all without a calculator! Now prove it."

"The land's been held by Malfoys since well before the Norman invasion," said a tall, thin male Auror behind Harry in a nasal voice.

"Apparently, all of your fellow Aurors really are as tiresomely literal-minded as you, Potter," said Draco. "I wonder if it's a requirement. As anyone with a room-temperature I.Q. should surely have figured out five minutes ago, what I mean is that I'd like to see any of you prove that ridiculous claim about 'former Death Eater activity', or that it had anything at all to do with one of my country places, or with me."

"We have no obligation to prove—" the Auror began, but at a glance from Harry, he suddenly fell silent.

"Ah," Draco said softly. "Not so thick after all, are you, Potter? I'm sure it seemed like such a brilliant idea at the time to introduce all those Muggle innovations into wizarding law. Search warrants… the need for habeas corpus… no arrest without just cause… But now you're rather hoist with your own petard, aren't you? You can't simply drag me off to Azkaban without proof of your… er… interesting allegations. And you don't have it, do you?"

Harry's furious face provided its own reply. "We'll get it," he said.

Draco smirked. "Good luck. In the meantime, why don't I tell myself that I'm free to go?"

He was turning to leave, realized Ginny, and he wasn't even looking at her. She saw Astoria standing near the male Auror, but Draco wasn't looking at her either. He was starting busily towards the street at the other end of the alley as if he couldn't imagine anywhere else he'd rather be.

Harry's hand clamped down on her arm. She hadn't felt his touch in so long, over a year and a half, that touch that she had once craved so much, so desperately, so hopelessly. And then when she'd had it, the desire had turned to ashes and dust. To feel it again now was shocking, because Harry was angry; it was in every line of his body, and he'd never been angry with her before. She'd seen him angry more times than she could count, but she'd never even imagined his anger directed at her.

"You're coming with me, Ginny," said Harry in a low hiss.

"Get your hands off her, Potter," said a flat, deadly voice.

It took Ginny several moments to identify it as Draco's. She looked up and saw him. He'd come back, or maybe he'd never left, and at the sight of him, a chill swept through her. The temperature all around them seemed to plummet instantly. His gray eyes had gone icy, his face was set into cold lines, and he loomed against the brick wall of the alley as if ready to spring on Harry at any moment. Everything that had seemed so light and amused and carefree about Draco had simply disappeared as his charming mask suddenly dropped, revealing… what?

Draco reached down and picked Harry's fingers off Ginny's arm, one by one. His hand brushed her skin, and it felt like iron.

"I could bloody well arrest you for using force on a Ministry officer, Malfoy—" Harry began.

"You haven't seen me use force yet, Potter," Draco said in the same flat, dead voice. "Don't you touch her. Never touch her again. Never lay a hand on Ginny Weasley, ever again."

"You're in no position to make demands, Malfoy," sneered Harry. "And you're free to go, all right, but if you don't get out of here now, you won't be."

Draco ignored him completely. He leaned down to Ginny.

"You wait for me," he said, and the words were a command. "Wait for me, Ginny."

Then he turned on his heel and left them all. Ginny watched him walk away, a stiff, upright, black-clad figure, and it was if time itself had turned back and she was looking at the Draco Malfoy she had known before the war. Except that he wasn't a frightened teenager anymore; now, he was a suddenly, shockingly frightening young man. Ginny kept looking after him and looking after him as if she'd fallen into freezing water and turned into ice, and now, since she could never move again, she certainly couldn't turn her head to look at anything else.

Who's the real Draco Malfoy? she wondered. I don't know. Nobody does. But I'm not afraid of him. Maybe I should be. I'm not, though. After all, a Gryffindor and a Weasley couldn't be afraid of anything, and Ginny was both.

"What was that about, Ginny?" growled Harry.

"I don't know what you mean," she said.

"Yes, you do. When Malfoy told you to wait for him, what the hell was he talking about?"

"I'm sure I don't have the least idea," Ginny said coolly. "But it's really none of your business, Harry."

Lack of fear, she decided, was a very useful thing at that particular moment. Harry's expression didn't begin to compare to what Draco's face had looked like when he'd bent down and spoken to her—nothing could compare to that sight, of course—but it still would have been more than enough to make someone like Astoria Greengrass quake in her Louboutins. Although Astoria looked like she was going to be more than happy to cooperate with the Aurors, Ginny saw. That tall, thin Auror with sandy brown hair was leading her away from the alley, and she was chatting to him in an animated way. The sight stiffened her resolve even more.

"You're coming with me, Ginny," Harry said to her. "Right now."

"I'll go where I like," she said. "And if it's not with you, Harry, there's nothing you can do about it. You don't have any proof of anything. You can't just haul me off to Azkaban, remember?"

"Oh, there's something I can do," he said grimly. "You're a witness, and I can make you come with me to the Ministry for questioning."

A witness! Ginny gulped. Oh, gods… I should've known Harry would drag me to the Ministry over that. Was it actually allowed under Muggle law? Ginny cudgeled her brains and could only come up with one vague memory of a single episode of Law and Order she'd seen once on the television set her father had rigged up in the garage. Maybe she should at least try to refuse. Maybe she should try to make a break for it. Maybe—

She studied Astoria, who was laughing and putting her hand on the male Auror's arm. Ginny recognized him now. It was Zane Smith, Zacharias and Zenobia's older brother. That family had money. Not as much as the Malfoys, but then, who did? The Greengrass bitch certainly didn't waste any time, did she?

"Fine, Harry," she snapped. "Let's get this over with."

He led her out of the alley, but he didn't put his hand on her arm. She knew why. Even as Ginny tried to convince herself that she hadn't seen what she thought she had, that nothing had changed, that the cheerful, charming mask the new Draco wore hadn't dropped to reveal something dark and sinister behind his pleasant façade, she knew that he had scared the hell out of Harry Potter. And if she was going to be honest with herself, she knew that whatever uncomplimentary things she might think about Harry, he was no coward. But no matter what the truth had actually been, Draco was gone now, and for all Ginny knew, she'd never even see him again. No… no. That just couldn't be true.

You wait for me. Wait for me, Ginny.

She remembered Draco's last words to her, and shivered again. Harry remembers them too. And Draco made him feel afraid. He'll never forget that, or forgive it. Men and their damn testosterone and pissing contests and… oh, and just think of everything Harry has to compensate for in that area, I should know… Stealing a sideways glance at his grim face and his narrowed green eyes, she groaned inwardly. Fuck, what have I got myself into now?


	10. Oh, What a Jerk Harry Is

A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers! I FINALLY got to Oregon…. The move is OVER… what a NIGHTMARE…. Anyway. Here's Chapter 10.

Ginny sat under the harsh light in one of the Ministry interview rooms, sipping at a cup of tea, trying desperately to keep sort out her jangled nerves. She hadn't even seen Harry since he'd left her there a few hours before. A minor Department of Mysteries official with an underbite and a stutter had come in with a quill and a parchment and politely asked if she wanted to give a statement about what she'd witnessed, and after a few moments' thought, Ginny said yes. Astoria had every reason to throw Draco to the rabid flobberworms with her testimony, after all. The least that she herself could do, Ginny decided, was to give an accurate account of what had actually happened in the alley.

After the short interview, a secretary had come in with tea and biscuits, and although the tea was weak and the biscuits dry and flavorless, Ginny accepted both. She hadn't eaten a thing all day since the cinnamon scone in Draco Malfoy's flat.

Draco.

Or rather, two Dracos. One was cheerful and charming, careless and flippant, light and easy and laughing, the one who had woken up next to her in bed that morning and teased her about cherry flavoring and morning-afters and the appalling lack of sex ed classes in the Hogwarts curriculum.

And what happens when boys and girls fancy each other very, very much.

She remembered how she had woken up to find him leaning over her with his pyjama top open, his bare chest radiating warmth, that lazy, sleepy, amused half-smile on his face, his silvery eyes half-lidded, his mouth half-open as if he were just about to kiss her, close, so close, closer still, almost there… Fuck! Ginny chomped viciously on a biscuit and winced as she bit her tongue. Why didn't I just grab him and pull his head down to mine and put a lip-lock on him? Oh, shite. Shite, shite. That's it. I don't know this happened but it has and it's too late to go back now. I really do fancy him! Ginny ran the sore spot on her tongue over and over her lip as if the slight stab of pain would erase the knowledge from her mind, but it was hopeless, as she very well knew. She had crossed the Rubicon of desire for Draco Malfoy, and at least she had more sense than to make any hopeless attempts at paddling back to the barren shore in a leaky rowboat. And yet…

And yet there was that other Draco, the one who had emerged when the sunny mask suddenly dropped. The one with eyes like ice and fingers like iron and a flat, deadly voice, the one who'd seemed, who had been, ready to kill if his orders weren't followed. Get your hands off her, Potter. Don't you touch her. Never touch her again. Never lay a hand on Ginny Weasley, ever again. And then, to her… You wait for me. Wait for me, Ginny.

Two Draco Malfoys, and Ginny had seen him change from one to the other before her eyes. Or at least she thought she had. Now that some time had passed, doubts were really starting to creep in. Trying to match the two just seemed so damn impossible; it was like dressing up Voldemort in drag and setting him the task of singing Don't Leave Me This Way on karaoke night at Illusions. Speaking of which, Colin had invited her to go Thursday next; all of his friends had declared that they really, really wanted to hear her version of Stand By Your Man, especially in a Tammy Wynette wig, although it was a crime to cover up that hair…

Ginny giggled. The sound was rather unsettling when she heard it echoing off the concrete walls. Maybe I'm becoming hysterical at last, she thought.

The door opened, and Ginny desperately hoped that it was some minor Ministry official or other telling her that she could finally go home. Gods, but how desperately she needed to get out of this cramped little room with its low ceiling and glaring greenish lights and make herself a cup of very strong coffee and just think, and think, and think about what she wanted to do now.

But it was Harry Potter instead.

"What are you doing here?" Ginny blurted.

He sat in a chair on the opposite side of the table without answering her.

"I told that other Auror exactly what happened in that alley, Harry," she said. "I suppose Astoria Greengrass said that Malfoy tortured small children in front of her?"

"No, your accounts pretty much square with each other," said Harry. He put down a cup of coffee and a copy of the Daily Prophet on the table next to him, absently. Except that it wasn't really absent at all, thought Ginny. It was the same copy Astoria Greengrass had been carrying, the same copy that she herself had looked at. It was open to the Rita Skeeter story.

"I don't have anything more to say. Can I go now?" Just the presence of that paper was making her nervous. She tried not to look at it. She didn't want to see what the little black-and-white Draco and Ginny were doing.

Harry drummed his fingers on the table. "I'd really like to hear if you do know anything more, Ginny."

"What are you going to do, throw me into solitary confinement and feed me on bread and water until I confess?" snapped Ginny. "I'm telling you that I don't know any more. You know more than I do, I'm sure. So are you going to tell me what you know?"

She didn't expect for a second that Harry would answer her, but he nodded.

"All right, Ginny. Part of what Malfoy told Astoria Greengrass is the truth. He's under investigation, all right. Actually, the investigation never really ended. It was just switched to the Department of Mysteries after he was cleared by the Wizengamot. We weren't about to ever give up as long as there was something to find. And we did find it last night."

"Are you going to tell me what it is?"

"Ginny, I really can't tell you all that much. I'm not allowed to. But Aurors did pick up activity right around his estate. Only a former Death Eater could've cast some of those spells, even though we can't tell exactly what the spells were, because a witch or wizard would need to have the Dark Mark in order to be able to do it. That's why we were trying to find Malfoy. Astoria Greengrass too, because the Department of Mysteries had information that she was with him."

"But none of that proves anything," said Ginny, grasping at straws. "You said as much yourself. You don't even know what the spells were, or what they did. If you actually had decent proof, you would've been able to take Malfoy in. All you have is suspicion."

"Yeah, that's about the size of it," said Harry, "as far as what we can prove. But Ginny, we know something happened last night. The only question is exactly what it was."

"Well, I don't see what it has to do with me," said Ginny.

Harry's face twisted. "You were just found in Draco Malfoy's… presence, Ginny."

"Whose presence I choose to be in is my own business, Harry," said Ginny. "You can't exactly arrest me for that."

"No, of course not." Harry was silent for a moment. "But what did Malfoy mean by what he said? 'Wait for me, Ginny'?"

"I really don't know," said Ginny. "Do you want to give me Veritaserum, Harry? Because I'll say exactly the same thing. I simply don't know. I don't know Malfoy very well at all."

"You seemed to know him well enough to wrap yourself round him in that alley!" snapped Harry. "What were you, a bloody tourniquet?"

Oh, shite, here we go."That didn't mean a thing. It was just a hug."

"Right," muttered Harry. "An innocent hug between friends. I'll just bet it was."

Ginny took a deep breath. "Harry, do you honestly think that means I'd cover up that Malfoy was doing anything like starting up the Death Eaters again, if I had any proof at all that he was doing it? Do you think I don't remember Tom Riddle and Voldemort and the last battle at Hogwarts—do you think I don't remember Fred-" Her throat closed up, and she couldn't go on. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the photograph-Ginny covering her eyes with her hands. Photograph-Draco shook his head and stroked her shoulders, her arms, her hair, and the little Ginny finally let him hold her in his arms. She rocked back and forth, her head against his chest.

"I know you remember Fred," Harry said softly. "So do I."

"And do you know, Harry, do you have any idea, how much I hate and despise Lucius Malfoy?" she demanded. "I think I hate him more than all the others put together. He terrifies me more than anyone else, and I hate the feeling of being afraid more than any other feeling I know."

Harry looked at her strangely. "He's dead, Ginny."

"I know. I just—" She broke off. How could she explain the nightmare flashes that kept flickering through her head?

"I hate everything and everyone connected with the Death Eaters, or with dark magic, or with any kind of rebirth of that cause, more than I could ever even describe to anyone," she said, more calmly. "But Draco Malfoy has changed, Harry. I'm sure you don't want to hear about it, but he has. Just the idea of him being involved in any kind of Death Eater activity now is too ridiculous for words."

"If you don't know him well enough to know what he's talking about when he tells you things, then you don't know him well enough to guess whether he could be a secret Death Eater or not," said Harry.

"I do think I know him well enough for that," she said reluctantly. "But what he said in that alley didn't make any more sense to me than it did to you."

"Maybe," muttered Harry. "But Ginny, whatever it was that happened in Dorset last night, it was Dark magic, and Draco Malfoy was behind it, I know he was. Nothing you can say can change that.'

Ginny bit her lip. She was really treading on dangerous ground now, but this had to be said. "Harry, you know about that story in the Prophet." Even Harry can't be obtuse enough to not know. It's sitting in front of him on the table! I was…uh… with Draco last night, right in London. That proves he couldn't have been behind whatever it was, if anything even happened in the first place. He couldn't have been anywhere near that Malfoy estate—oh!"

Over their heads, a light shattered. Harry didn't even seem to notice. Ginny did. He's doing uncontrolled magic again, she realized. I don't remember him doing that since he was fifteen years old. He really is getting worked up.

"Damn it, Ginny, that Prophet story's already come up in meetings over this case," he said. "Of course it has. But it doesn't prove anything, I don't care what anybody says. It doesn't. Malfoy has operatives everywhere. All he would've had to do would be to give the word, and then Death Eaters would have been following his orders down in Dorset while he was out clubbing with you— and just what the hell were you doing with him, anyway?"

"It wasn't anything like what that story claimed." Ginny ignored photograph-Draco's indignant look. "You know exactly how Rita Skeeter is. You can't trust a single thing she writes. And I don't like your tone of voice, Harry."

"I want to know."

"If you must know, I was at that club with Blaise Zabini, not Malfoy. I had a bit too much to drink, and Malfoy didn't want me to go home with Blaise. He can be a bit…" Ginny made a vague gesture with a hand.

"Very noble of Malfoy. If it's a gay bar, then why was he worried about what Zabini might do? Or does he bat for both teams?"

"Look, Malfoy was only trying to help," said Ginny.

"And I suppose he was only trying to help when he had you up against his car with his tongue stuck down your throat and one hand up your skirt!"

"That's not how it was at all," said Ginny hotly.

"Then how was it?" demanded Harry.

"If you have to know, I was kissing him!"

In the silence that followed, thought Ginny, you could have heard a pair of gold satin knickers drop.

That may not have been the most diplomatic thing to say to Harry right now, she thought.

But he was already shaking his head. The idea that she'd offered herself up for snogging to Draco Malfoy was one that just couldn't enter Harry Potter's world, so it was impossible, unthinkable; oh, she knew all too well how his mind worked.

"Malfoy was taking advantage of you," said Harry.

"He wouldn't do that," Ginny insisted.

"The hell he wouldn't," said Harry. "I know what Malfoy is. I've always known. He's never fooled me. He would have shagged you right then and there if he could have got away with it, Ginny. Shite, what am I saying? I'll bet he did do it, the moment he got you into the back seat of his car, and you were too drunk to stop him or even remember anything about it!"

"He wouldn't do that, Harry!" Ginny repeated. "And he didn't."

"Yeah, well, I damn well think he would and did. It was the perfect opportunity."

"Malfoy never would, he's not that kind of—"

"The fuck he isn't." Harry studied her face. "What makes you think you can be so sure?"

Photograph-Draco was lunging forward, his little grayscale face filled with murderous rage, trying his best to take futile swings at Harry outside of the picture frame, and photograph-Ginny was shaking her head, mouthing no, no, no, never,, but Ginny somehow didn't think that Harry would take any of that as evidence. She looked at the floor. She was sure that Draco wouldn't have taken advantage of her, but she truly did not want to explain any of the reasons why to Harry Potter, her childhood crush, the boy she thought she'd loved for so many years before it all went horribly, hideously wrong.

"Ginny! I'm waiting," said Harry.

"Because I just know, Harry," said Ginny. "Can't you just believe me?"

"You just know," said Harry. "But you can't know, Ginny. You saw that photo. Are you honestly going to tell me that you have any clear memory of what happened last night?"

"Uh—" Shite! This is why I never would've made it in Slytherin. I just can't lie convincingly.

"Then you don't know what Malfoy actually did to you. I thought so." Something very dark and ugly came into his face.

"Look, Harry, you've been a part of the wizarding world since you were eleven years old, but there are some things that you don't know," Ginny said steadily. "Women's things. Things that only witches know, because there are some sorts of magic that wizards don't understand. I didn't want to tell you, because some things are secret, but you've forced me to it. There are spells that only women can do in order to find out if anything like rape has happened to them, and I've done them, because dear gods, don't you think I wanted to know the truth about this, too? And if Malfoy had forced me last night, I'm telling you, I'd know. He didn't."

Harry scanned her face again. Then he looked away from her, seeming to collect himself . "All right. I believe you about that, Ginny."

She gave a very small, very secret sigh of relief. Apparently, she could lie well enough to fool Harry.

"I want you to do something," he said.

"What?" she asked warily. But whatever it is, I'll do it if I possibly can, she thought, grimacing inwardly. I do owe Harry that much. He thinks he's doing the right thing, and he means well. He always has done. The trouble is, he's always thought that meaning well is enough.

Harry leaned forward. "Ginny, I want you go to St. Mungo's and get tested right now."

"Whatever for?" Ginny blinked at him. "Harry, you just admitted that you believe what I said about Malfoy not… uh… doing anything to me. So what would be the point of a rape test?"

"I don't mean that sort of test," said Harry. "I mean one of the new conclusive tests for an Imperius charm."

All the breath went out of Ginny as if Harry had hit her in the stomach. "A—a what? An Imperius charm? Harry, you've got to be joking!"

"I think that's what Malfoy did to you," Harry said flatly. "I think you're under Imperius right now."

She stood up. "That's it. I'm leaving."

"You can't," said Harry. "And if you were yourself, Ginny, you wouldn't want to."

"I am myself! And you're absolutely barking mad!"

"Then why wouldn't you at least want to convince yourself that you're right? That it isn't true, what I'm saying about Malfoy?" Harry challenged her.

"Because—" Ginny stopped. Because it can't be true was the phrase that had leapt to her lips, but for some reason, she hadn't been quite able to say it.

I haven't been myself today, she thought. Not from the moment I woke up in Draco Malfoy's flat and saw him next to me in bed. And yet.. .and yet even that's not quite true, is it? Sometimes she thought that she had been walking a road that had been leading further and further away from herself, imperceptibly, and that she couldn't even put her finger on when she'd made the wrong turning.

But Draco Malfoy couldn't have put her under the Imperius curse. Couldn't have done. She knew what that was like. She knew worse, because she'd been put under Imperius more often than strictly necessary in Defense Against the Dark Arts class during her sixth year under the Carrows, and they'd known how to cast that curse if any witch or wizard ever did. It was still a bad joke next to what she'd endured during her first year.

"Wouldn't you want put any man in Azkaban who did that to you, let alone Malfoy? Think of what Tom Riddle did, wasn't that like Imperius?" Harry asked angrily.

"Harry, I am thinking of it!"Ginny said passionately. "Yes, that was like Imperius, but that doesn't mean that you know what it was like. You can't know. You'll never understand. Voldemort didn't touch my body, he couldn't, but he raped my mind when I was only eleven years old, Harry. Eleven years old! And I know all about that test—"

Ginny broke off. We only want to find out the truth, Ginny dear, her mother had said. We have to know exactly what happened. We need to know so that we can help you. Please, dear, let us help you. And then they'd taken her to St. Mungo's the summer after her first year, before she'd even turned twelve years old, for this same test. She remembered everything about it, everything. She'd been so terrified before it happened, expecting the worst, and then all that the mediwitches had done was to scan her clothed body and head with a wand. But it hardly seemed as if it could have been worse if they'd stripped her naked in front of everyone she'd ever known. Tom Riddle hadn't touched her physically, they assured her over and over again. She'd heard a mediwitch whisper to her mother that he'd tried, and that if he could have done, he would have. But the shade of Voldemort hadn't succeeded in taking any kind of coherent form. That was why they hadn't done a rape test; there would be no point. But she felt so dirty that she wasn't sure she could ever be clean again. She were so many things she had never told anybody; Tom Riddle leering down at her, whispering about all the things he wanted to do to her, all the ways he planned to use her once he took shape just enough to force himself on her bound, helpless body lying on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets. And under the Imperius test, they had all been revealed.

Only chance had saved her from every one of those twisted, evil fantasies taking place in the flesh. As terrible as it was to live with them all having been implanted in her mind, Ginny knew that if Voldemort's teenaged self had actually done them to her, it would have been infinitely worse.

And… and Harry. Harry had saved her.

Ginny looked at his flushed, furious face, and tried as hard as she could to understand what was behind it. Was she being unfair to him now? Was he showing that he cared about her in the only way that he knew, the only way that he could, just as he had done then? But she'd known for a very long time that if Harry had arrived even a little later when she was eleven years old, it would have been too late. She'd known since she was sixteen years old that Ron was the one who'd really tried to find her then, not Harry, because her brother had finally confessed it to her when he knew that things were moving too fast between her and Harry. That piece of news had made her pull back from Harry in some indefinable way for a long time. In fact, she seriously wondered now if it was why she hadn't seriously tried to lose her virginity with him until after her eighteenth birthday.

"Then this is exactly why I want you to be tested for Imperius," Harry was saying. "This is why I can't believe you'd defend Lucius Malfoy's son like this. Ginny, none of that nightmare with Tom Riddle would've ever happened if it hadn't been for just one thing. The Chamber of Secrets wouldn't even have been opened if it wasn't for that one thing."

Ginny closed her eyes. She knew exactly what was coming next.

"Draco's father dropped that diary in your cauldron at the start of your first year," went on Harry. "If he hadn't done that, then you never would've gone through any of it. It was all Lucius Malfoy's fault."

"I know, Harry, I know it was, but he isn't the same person as—"

"And not even ten minutes ago, you told me that you despised people like Lucius Malfoy—no, you said that you despised Lucius Malfoy,, even though he's dead. Ginny, you said that you hated him more than Voldemort. You can't seriously expect me to believe that you willingly snogged his son and let him put his hands all over you, and all but let him shag you on a public street!"

"You're just jealous of him!" Ginny retorted, and was then struck by a sudden and very strong wish that she had bit her tongue off before saying a single word. Nothing, nothing she could have possibly said to Harry at that moment would have been worse. It was true. He knew it, and so did she.

Harry rose from the table, very slowly. His face was as dark as a thundercloud. "You're going to St. Mungo's right now, Ginny."

She began backing away, towards the door. He followed her.

"Uh… I can't do it just now. Maybe I could go later," she said. "I have to go back to my flat right now. Luna doesn't know where I am. I promised I'd meet her for lunch."

"Luna's out in the corridor. All the employees at the Department of Mysteries came in today. They're all working on the Malfoy investigation. She won't worry about you."

"Then nobody can take me to St. Mungo's," said Ginny. "I'll just go home."

"Hermione will take you," said Harry.

"Hermione?" asked Ginny, startled. "What on earth does she have to do with any of this?"

"She works at the Department of Mysteries now," said Harry.

"Whenever did she start? I thought she was still organizing S.P.E.W."

"She joined about six months ago, I think."

"But I haven't even seen her in almost two years, and the last time I did, we had a bloody awful fight! I don't want to go anywhere with her. I don't even want to see her. Tell her to go away."

"She's going with you, Ginny," said Harry.

How on earth had she ended up backed up against the door with him in front of her? She was holding the paper in her hand now, scrunching it up, and she heard faint cries. She could swear that at least one of them sounded like a tiny sort of cricket version of Draco's voice. She relaxed her fingers.

'Now you listen to me, Harry," she said bravely, hoping that her voice didn't wobble. "I am not going anywhere, and you can't make me. I haven't been charged with anything, I'm not officially a suspect, and under Muggle law, you can't just hold me at the Ministry or force me to do things I don't want to do."

"But we're not under Muggle law," said Harry. "This is still wizarding law. Things haven't changed as much as all that. Anybody who's suspected of being under an Imperius curse can be forced to undergo a test."

"Harry, no matter what you think of Malfoy as a person, he hasn't been convicted of anything," she said, fighting to keep calm. "There's something else you haven't thought of. I'm telling you that Draco Malfoy would never do anything like that. The mediwitches at St. Mungo's won't find anything. But if you accuse Malfoy of that kind of crime, the very worst there is, don't you understand what just that accusation alone might do to him? If the news ever got out, half of the wizarding world would never forget it or forgive him."

"No, they wouldn't, would they?" said Harry with obvious relish.

"Are you saying that you wouldn't even care if it did get out?"

"Malfoy would deserve anything he gets," said Harry.

"But the news couldn't get out about him unless it also got out about me, Harry! Or haven't you thought of what it'll mean to me? What it'll make people think about me?"

"You're an innocent victim," said Harry. "Nobody could possibly think it was your fault."

"Shite! Do you still not understand the wizarding world at all? Don't you know how most wizards think about a woman who's even been accused of having an Imperius put on her by a man, when they were caught together in a photo like this one just the night before?" Ginny stabbed her finger at the Daily Prophet picture.

Is that true? Is it? photograph-Ginny demanded of photograph-Draco, and he nodded sadly.

"It's the witch's fault; that's what they'll say, she must have led him on, she must've provoked him," went on Ginny. "I'll be blamed almost as much as Draco will! Half of them will hate him and half of them will hate me, and you don't even care."

Harry bit his lip. "Ginny—Ginny, listen to me. Ginny, I'd be careful; when—all right, if- we find out that Malfoy's guilty, the news wouldn't get out, it would be kept a secret. I wouldn't do that to you. I care about you too much, I really do, I mean it, but we have to find out the truth. Just go to St. Mungo's for the test, there's Hermione, she'll take you—"

Harry opened the door, and there Hermione was in the corridor, giving Ginny a tentative but still superior smile. She'd been waiting all along. Ginny wondered if she'd been there the entire time.

That was the last straw.

"You don't care about me at all, Harry! You've somehow convinced yourself that you do after all, who the fuck knows how, but you don't—you can't! You haven't even bothered with me for two years except for a few stupid owls, but once you saw that I'd picked up the pieces and moved on, you just had to try to get me back, and you can't get me back—and don't touch me—"

The little black and white Draco and Ginny were trying to climb out of the picture frame now, their arms held out to her, but the flat surface kept crushing them back, and they finally fell against Draco's Mercedes, looking defeated.

Should've known better than to try that, said photograph-Draco.

There's got to be something we can do! said photograph-Ginny.

There isn't, shrugged photograph-Draco. Look, I'd like to help our real selves out as much as you do, but three-dimensional space-time itself is a bit much for even a Malfoy to go up against.

"She's hysterical," said Hermione's soothing voice. "Perhaps I ought to give her something, a Calming draft might be helpful—"

Luna's white, shocked face hovered behind Hermione's, and other than that, the corridor was empty, thank all the gods. Ginny struggled to contain herself, to drag herself back from the edge of screaming and kicking and punching and flying to pieces and doing everything, everything that would confirm their worst fears about her.

"Luna," said Ginny steadily. "I want Luna to come with me to St. Mungo's, too."

They would drag her away if she didn't go quietly, after all. She had to keep her last shreds of dignity. And she had to be cunning and clever, because if she wasn't, she would never find a way out of this catastrophe, She would never find Draco again, and she had to find him again. She knew, now, that she couldn't live with herself if she didn't find a way to warn him about what the Ministry and Harry Potter between them were trying to do to him. And because she had all the dangerously unquenchable curiousity of a Weasley, she knew that no matter what Draco Malfoy was really up to, she had to find out what it was before the Ministry did.


	11. Sinister Imperius Test Results

A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers!

Ginny walked through the sterile white corridors of St. Mungo's, flanked by Hermione and Luna on either side, wondering if she ought to make a break for it. No. She was already hopelessly lost by now. So was Hermione, apparently. She stopped to ask someone for directions, and Ginny scanned the hall, making one last attempt to figure out where they were. Should I try to get Luna to help me? Her friend kept giving her miserable looks and pressing her hand in odd ways. She winked and grimaced, wiggled her shoulders around, and made strange signs with her fingers, but somehow none of it seemed very helpful. As Luna herself would undoubtedly say, it might all only be due to a sudden attack by the Frabjous Bandersnatch. A tall, thin, dark-skinned young man in a lab coat walked by them.

"Dean!" Ginny exclaimed without thinking.

He turned, and his face lit up with genuine pleasure when he saw her. "Ginny, whatever are you doing here?"

"Uh—" Oh, dear gods, what to say now? She'd seen Dean a few times since Hogwarts and she would have loved for them to become friends, but she'd always been uncomfortably aware that she'd treated him very badly when she'd thrown him over for Harry during her fifth year. Ginny had always hoped that she hadn't used him as coldly as she was afraid she had done, but sometimes, in the middle of the night, when she woke up from restless nightmares and propped her head up on her hands and stared out the window and felt very empty and cold, she wasn't so sure.

Hermione turned to him. "Dean, where's Examination Room 101?"

"To the left, but, uh… is it for…"

"Me," said Ginny suddenly. "And Dean, I want you to do the Imperius test."

He looked at her, his face reflecting all the shock she was sure he felt. "Me? But… Ginny… you can't really mean… it's not…Padma's around somewhere, I think, let me find her-"

"I don't want Padma Patil. I want you to do it, Dean. And I know what my rights are," she said, and she did. She remembered everything that had happened that summer when she was eleven years old with a terrible clarity, and she knew that it was her right to request a medical personnel of her choice to perform that test. She knew why they were all so shocked, too. Female mediwitches always did that test for a girl or woman. But she was going to break protocol, and even though she wasn't sure quite yet how it might help her, she had a feeling that it could. When the opportunity comes, she thought,I'll know.

Ginny sat on the little table in the brightly lit, boxlike room, resolutely ignoring Hermione. Luna stood in a corner, intently examining a remarkably uninteresting painting of a dreary landscape. Ginny wondered just how much longer they were all going to be stuck in there together. It was rather difficult to pretend they didn't notice one another's presence when the room was about eight feet square. How long could it take Dean to run those test results?

Hermione cleared her throat so loudly that Luna jumped, and a cow in the painting mooed and started running towards the horizon. "How have you been, Ginny?" she asked.

"None of your business," said Ginny. Well. So much for the small talk.

"I certainly know that you don't want to be here-" began Hermione.

"That's the understatement of the year!"

"But it really is necessary, Ginny. You did agree to go through with it."

"I'd rather agree than be dragged here in chains," said Ginny.

"Honestly, Ginny," sighed Hermione. "We weren't going to do anything like that."

Ginny remembered the chains fixed to the arms and legs of the chairs for defendants at the Wizengamot. _Oh, you weren't, were you? _"Fine," she snapped. "Let's get the explanation over with.

"I know you're convinced that Draco Malfoy couldn't have possibly put you under an Imperius curse—"

"Yes, I certainly am!"

"But I'd like you to understand why we think he really might have done, because we're just rather worried about your becoming associated with him in any way just now. The Department of Mysteries doesn't do things like this for arbitrary reasons. Ginny, he really could be involved with renewed Death Eater activity."

"I'd have a much easier time believing that," said Ginny, "if the Ministry actually had anything resembling proof. It doesn't sound like you have it yet."

"Not exactly, but…" Hermione hesitated. "There's something else. I've sifted through the evidence collected by the Aurors from the estate near Lyme last night, and I believe that some of it shows the magical trace of Malfoy activity, not just the actions of any former Death Eater. Draco Malfoy's the only one left, because his father and mother are both dead, of course. Harry doesn't know anything about this part yet, partly because nobody else at the Department of Mysteries agrees with me about it—yet—but they're going to see it my way, Ginny. And if I'm right, then—"

"Then you can explain how this photograph was taken," Ginny said dismissively, pointing to the copy of the Daily Prophet. Photo-Ginny made an alarmingly rude gesture at Hermione, who blanched back.

"I will," Hermione said earnestly. "I just don't know what the explanation is yet. Draco Malfoy could have easily lied to you about his involvement with whatever might be going on down in Dorset, even if it was only by omission, by simply not telling you. Couldn't he have hidden it from you? How well do you really know him, Ginny?"

Maybe…just possibly… just in theory, mind you… Hermione had just asked a question that had crossed Ginny's own mind a time or two. As unwelcome as the thought was, the deep vein of honesty in Ginny was making her squirm inwardly now. She didn't know him very well. She didn't know him at all, really, except that he was beautiful and charming and sexy, and that he made her laugh, and whenever she was around him, she wanted to lean in and sniff deeply and then start licking and tasting and nibbling and delving deeper and deeper into Draco Malfoy to find out just how deeply the taste of him really went. The flash of that other Draco she had seen that morning had frightened her, in a way. But whatever it meant, how she felt about it or what she thought was none of the Ministry's damn business. She glared back at Hermione without saying a word.

The door opened, and oh, thank all the gods!, it was Dean, holding a flat metal tablet. "The results are in." He put the tablet up on the wall and tapped it with his wand, and lines lit up." "Draco Malfoy didn't… ah… engage in any actual sexual activity with you last night, consensual or otherwise. That's all we can tell from that test, of course."

"What?" demanded Ginny. "This was only supposed to be the Imperius test!"

Dean cleared his throat. "I received orders to run the other one as well. That's what took so long."

Ginny turned on Hermione. "Why? Harry said he believed me when I told him that Malfoy hadn't done anything to me in that way!"

"It was a standard precaution in these sorts of cases, Ginny," said Hermione. "We had to be sure, and now we know."

"What sorts of cases?"

"Dean, what about the Imperius test?" asked Hermione.

"I'm getting to that," said Dean, looking unhappily at Ginny. "Hermione, was it really necessary to put Ginny through this? She clearly didn't want—"

"I've tried to be reasonable. But this is my job, Dean, and I've got to do it. I swore an oath. The results? Please?"

"Those were negative as well."

"Negative? Are you sure? Couldn't there have been a mistake?" asked Hermione.

"Yes, I'm sure, and no, there couldn't have been a mistake," said Dean. "Draco Malfoy did not put Ginny under an Imperius curse."

"Could he have done something else to her?"

"Hermione, I don't know, but that's not what you asked me to test for, and frankly, we can't do anything resembling a reliable test for anything else. He didn't force himself on her physically, and he didn't put her under Imperius. You can't convict him of anything along those lines. Give it up."

"No," snapped Hermione. "Dean, I need you to keep her here."

"We're done with the test," said Dean. "There's no reason to do that."

"There's a very good reason to do that," said Hermione.

Dean crossed his arms. "Then you'd better tell me what it is, Hermione."

"The Department of Mysteries doesn't need to explain—"

"Yeah, well, I don't work for the Department of Mysteries, even though they're interfering with hospital business," said Dean, "and I certainly don't work under you."

"That's as may be," said Hermione, "but you can't interfere with Ministry business. Although I suppose that under law, you do have the right to know what steps we're going to take. Harry sent out Aurors to bring Malfoy in on suspicion of putting you under Imperius, Ginny. We have reasonable cause to arrest him now, based on that suspicion. We can get him in on that and then get proof for all the rest. We'll send Aurors down to that Malfoy estate in Dorset, the one near Lyme Regis—"

"You planned this!" gasped Ginny. "Harry never cared about my being put under Imperius, and you certainly don't, Hermione. All either of you cares about is that you can use it to hold Draco Malfoy on trumped-up charges for this shite about Death Eaters!"

"It's all perfectly legal," snapped Hermione. "And anyway, Malfoy did it, Ginny, you know he did."

"Did what?"

"I—well—" Hermione looked confused for a moment. "I don't know all of the exact details, nobody does; but there's some sort of new Death Eater activity, and Malfoy's behind it. We've simply got to do something, and we're going to. I'm the one who's worked out the plan to catch him-"

"I'll just bet you have! But you don't know what really happened, any more than Harry does! You're both inventing things out of your own sick minds so that you can get Draco put away in Azkaban, where he'll die or go mad in a month, you just want to destroy him any way you can, I never want anything to do with either of you, ever again!" The bushy-haired girl was swimming before Ginny's eyes through a haze of red, and then all that Ginny could seem to see was handfuls and handfuls of that hair all over the floor, she'd tear out every bit of it herself by the roots-

Her own hands were stretching out towards the back of Hermione's head as the other woman turned to say something to Dean. Ginny watched her fingers curl into claws.

Then another pair of hands were clamping onto hers, dragging them down into her lap.

"Ginny's awfully upset," said Luna's apologetic voice. "I do think it would help if I could just take her to the loo for a bit, Hermione. Don't you agree?"

"Yes, yes," said Hermione, looking distinctly relieved. "Go on and take her."

'I'm so dreadfully sorry about this entire thing." Ginny could hear Luna's voice over the water running from the cold water tap in the little bathroom. She splashed it on her face and dried herself with a towel.

Ginny looked down at the countertop. She still had the copy of the Daily Prophet, and photo- Ginny and photo-Draco were sitting on a bench in the corner of the picture, talking intently about something. They were holding hands.

"You can make up for it now, Luna," she said.

"Whatever do you mean- oh. Do you think that toilet tank's sturdy enough?"

"I don't know," said Ginny, climbing on the back of it and up towards the small window. "There's only one way to find out."

"I can't just let you escape, you know," said Luna.

"Oh, I think you'll find that you can." Ginny drew her wand and pointed it straight at Luna's chest.

"That's not very nice," Luna observed mildly.

"Not telling me about Draco Malfoy being under investigation wasn't very nice either," said Ginny, hoisting one leg up over the windowsill.

"But I couldn't. I certainly wanted to, because I saw how happy and shiny you looked after every single time you saw him, but I just couldn't do it. I wanted to tell you about Hermione too, but we're required to sign that Secrecy Oath on the day we're hired and shown where our cubicles are, you see. We don't need to sign it in blood exactly, although I think I did prick my finger on the quill a bit, but it does keep us from telling anybody anything important about what's going in the Department of Mysteries. I feel ever so bad about that. And Hermione's been so horribly bossy ever since she started desperately trying to date Hakgfjaheitohjhj, so I wanted to tell you about that as well—oh, bother, I can't even say his name—"

"Malfoy said that he thought you were with a boyfriend on Saturday night, when he came back to our flat to try to drop me off," interrupted Ginny as a thought struck her. "But he was wrong. Harry was the one who was there, wasn't he? He was waiting for Malfoy to bring me back so that he could catch him? Just stomp on the floor once with your foot if I'm right, twice if I'm wrong."

Stomp.

"I knew it," muttered Ginny. "They probably just framed Malfoy from beginning to end. Well, I'm going back home."

Stomp. Stomp.

"I shouldn't go back home? But why? Oh… you can only answer yes or no questions. Because it's dangerous?"

Stomp.

"Don't tell me, let me guess! Of course, I suppose you must do anyway. The Department of Mysteries bloody well has our flat staked out?"

Stomp.

"I'm getting out of here right now, and then I'll figure out where to go," said Ginny, performing a Fracturing hex on the glass.

"You do seem rather determined," said Luna. "Could I ask you for one favor, then?"

"I'm not feeling very favorably inclined right now," said Ginny.

"Just Stun me and leave me lying on the floor, if you wouldn't mind," said Luna. "Otherwise, it'll cause ever so much bother, because they'll say I let you escape."

"All right," said Ginny. "But it's only because of our deep friendship, understand."

"Thanks awfully," said Luna, arranging herself neatly on the floor in preparation.

Tappity. Tappity. Tap tap tap!

Ginny scratched frantically with the tip of her wand at the door of the flat in Clapham. She had a very uneasy feeling about whether or not her Illusionment charm would actually succeed in hiding her from the Department of Mysteries for even one minute longer. _That cat on the front step gave me a very strange look. Maybe it was a Kneazle. I hadn't heard the Ministry was using them as spies, but I didn't know they were forcing Imperius tests on people, either. At this point, I'd believe anything!_ Bill had sworn the charm worked beautifully against mummies in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, but how much of a recommendation was that, really? _And why isn't anybody answering? Oh, fuck, what if he isn't home; then what do I do? I'll just have to risk it._ Ginny drew her fist back.

Bang. Bang! bBang!/b

The door opened. Blaise Zabini winced and dodged out of the way of Ginny's fist.

"Oof! What's this all about, then? It's not that I'm against beautiful women beating me up in theory, understand, but my day for experiment along those lines is every other Thursday. And it's Sunday today, isn't it?" He blinked blearily at the clock on the wall. Its hands stood at Get Out of Bed, You Lazy Wanker. "What in Hermaphrodite's name are you doing at my door at the ungodly hour of five o'clock in the afternoon, Ginny Weasley? This had better be important."

"It is," said Ginny in a low voice. "It's rather desperate."

"Really?" Blaise leered at her. "Looking for an afternoon delight, then?"

"No!"

"Shall we shag now, or shag later?"

"We'll shag never, Zabini! Will you just listen to reason?"

He put a hand to his ear. "I'm listening. Hmm. All I hear is a voice saying, 'Shag, shag, shag, shag, shag, wonderful shag—'"

"Zabini! I'm a fugitive on the run from the law and the Ministry is after me right now because of Draco Malfoy!" burst out Ginny. "Just let me in."

", why didn't you say so in the first place?" Blaise swung the door wide.

"Thanks." Ginny darted in, standing on the threshold and looking about a bit suspiciously. "What was that about all the shagging, though?"

He laughed. "Just taking the mickey out of you a bit, Gin-gin. Care for some espresso?"

"So," said Blaise a few minutes later, when they were both seated at his kitchen table with cups of espresso. "Care to elaborate on what brings you to see the Great Zabini on such a lovely Sunday afternoon, when everyone should be either asleep or shagging? I mean, everyone should be shagging _me_, of course, but because there's only so much of me to go around, you'll all have to share. You'd be first in line, of course, because you're already here."

"I thought you were going to drop it about the shagging," said Ginny.

"I can't," admitted Blaise. "I'm constitutionally unable to not talk about it. I've tried therapy."

"Right," said Ginny. "Well…" She turned the little cup round and round in her hands, wondering exactly where to begin. She also rather wondered if she'd been gripped by temporary insanity to enter Blaise Zabini's lair in the first place, no matter what sort of desperation drove her. It was hard to tell where to put the cup down, because the surface of the table was carved to resemble a naked woman, and Ginny was seated just above the nipples. The ceiling above the table was mirrored, which seemed rather pointless, she thought, because she couldn't imagine anyone wanting to actually lie naked on the knobbly surface. It wasn't just the woman, either, as she'd thought at first; there was also a man, and there was another woman, and another man, oh, it was an entire orgy, and was that actually a goat? Ginny looked away from the table, sneaked a peek at Blaise's bedroom through the half-open door, and groaned inwardly. Sure enough, red shag carpet, a heart-shaped bed, and black velvet paintings on the walls. Was that a stripper pole? And now he'd caught her looking!

"Yes," he said.

"Yes what?"

"Yes to whatever you're wondering. Yes, it revolves. Yes, it vibrates. Yes, it glows in the dark. Yes, a full ninety-eight point nine percent of my partners have told me those odd tickly rubbery bits feel amazing when they're firmly rubbed against—"

Clearly, it was time to take the entire situation in hand. "Blaise, did Malfoy ever tell you about the time I cast the Bat-Bogey hex on him at the end of my fifth year?"

"Y…yes," Blaise said rather cautiously.

"And did you know that it can also be cast on rather intimate areas of one's person?"

"No…"

"Well, now you do," Ginny said sweetly.

Blaise gulped. "All right, then. How about if we get right to the explanation?"

"The Ministry is investigating Malfoy again," said Ginny. "Actually, they never really stopped."

"I was afraid of that, but I can't say I'm surprised. He ought to just pay a visit to old Beneficium at the Wizengamot, drop a nice big bribe on the floor, say oops, bend over to get it whilst wearing those really, really tight dragon-hide trousers, and then—"

"It's a lot worse than that. The investigation's being run by the Department of Mysteries, and supposedly, they found out that there was some sort of…" Ginny hesitated. Blaise had always held himself aloof from anything resembling Death Eater activity at Hogwarts, and his family had been completely cleared of involvement with Voldemort. She'd just have to trust him. "Well, they're not really sure what," she finished rather lamely, "but some kind of former Death Eater activity around the Malfoy estate in Dorset, near Lyme Regis. They're convinced Draco Malfoy had something to do with it. They think he was there. And I don't see how he could have been, Blaise." Ginny handed him the Daily Prophet. "I suppose you haven't seen this yet."

"No, of course not, I was asleep, as any sane person should be on a Sunday afternoon. What could possibly be so very interesting- oh." A huge grin spread across Blaise's face. "Hands off it is, then. Draco and I have a very strict policy when it comes to each other's girls. And boys, except that where he's concerned, of course, he couldn't care less about my boys, and he doesn't have any boys. So now that you're his girlfriend—"

"I am not his girlfriend!"

"Funny, that's not what Draco's photograph just told me," said Blaise. "Also, if you don't want to give that impression, Ginny, you might want to tell your photograph to not moan quite so loudly as he plays with your breasts. Very nice. 38C, I'm guessing? Just as a sort of scientific observation, of course. Mmm, let me see…" He leaned closer in towards the paper. A tiny black and white hand flashed out and punched him in the nose. "Ow!" He winced. "He was bloody serious. Mate, I promise, I won't touch her. You've got a wicked right jab even when you're only three inches tall."

Ginny blushed. He pushed the paper back at her. "Gin, I see your point, of course. Draco couldn't have been gallivanting around Lyme with Death Eaters through the wee hours if he was feeling you up against his Mercedes. The Ministry's got no case." Blaise shook his head. "Who's mad enough to dream up that sort of shite anyway?"

"Somebody new is running the case now," sighed Ginny.

"Do tell."

"Harry Potter."

Blaise gave a long, low whistle. "Your ex, of course. Shite. Ginny, the Department of Mysteries is never going to get off of Draco's perfect arse again as long as he lives, or Potter does. How about if we arrange an accident?"

"It's very tempting," said Ginny. "But Blaise, it's still even worse than you think. Harry's working with Hermione Granger now, so he's actually got some brains behind him—"

"They were always behind him, seeing as how they were always in his arse," said Blaise.

She rolled her eyes. "I'm serious. She's the one coming up with all the plans to try to get Malfoy."

"This doesn't sound good," said Blaise. "Is Draco in any additional trouble I don't know about yet?"

"Loads," Ginny said grimly, and she told him.

By the end, Blaise's eyebrows were hitting his hairline. "Let me get this straight," he said shakily. "The Department of Mysteries, Imperius tests, Potter, the Chosen One, half of the wizarding world's got their heads so far up his arse they'll never be able to pull them out again—oh, and is it true what I've heard about the size of his Quidditch set, by the way?"

Ginny thought about this for a second. Did she really hate Harry this much by now? "Blaise, can you keep a secret?"

"No."

"Then I'm not going to tell you."

"That's all you had to say. Anyway, to go on with the list…Potter and Granger between them may not have everybody believing them now, but they will, so the power of the Ministry will be on their side and against Draco, they'd love to start a vicious smear campaign, they'll probably manufacture evidence if they don't find any, they're going to try to railroad him into Azkaban and round up a stray Dementor to suck out his soul and turn him into one of the legion of the undead, and you know what they all say that does to your tennis game. And worst of all— splergh!"

A large barn owl with barred wings flew directly into Blaise's face. Ginny's heart sank. She recognized it as Splenda, the new Weasley owl. With a self-important look, it fluttered back slightly and extended one claw to Ginny. A blood-red letter was in it.

"Fuck," she muttered. "This is not good."

"You're telling me. I just spent five galleons on my custom eyebrow wax and that bloody owl ruined the job completely!" spluttered Blaise.

"Sorry." Ginny steeled herself and opened the envelope.

'GINEVRA WEASLEY!" the Howler trumpeted. "I hope you're proud of yourself, that's all I can say! I just hope you're satisfied. I will never be able to hold my head up in front of any of neighbors ever again, as long as I live, now that everyone knows you've been prancing about London, behaving like a wanton tart! Margaret Murgatroyd was very quick to show me the Daily Prophet this afternoon, and I have never been so embarrassed in all my life as I was by that story about you and that horrible Draco Malfoy. But your whorish behavior is the least of the problem, Ginevra."

Ginny closed her eyes briefly. Whorish behavior! And Mum called me 'Ginevra' twice! Oh, this is bad,this is really bad.

"Harry and Hermione were kind enough to tell me all about the Ministry investigation into Malfoy's activities, and while they tried not to distress me with the full story of your lack of cooperation, I could read between the lines well enough. Are you turning your back on all the values we've ever taught you so that you can gallivant about with criminals and former Death Eaters who may be turning to their old ways again? Did we raise you to abandon all shame? Do you want to break your mother's heart? And…" The screechy voice caught. "Hermione's told me a few other things as well. Ginny, please don't be so very foolish. I don't know what's gone on between you and Malfoy, and I don't wish to know, but he's engaged to marry Astoria Greengrass."

The Howler's tone softened even more. "Harry's so very sad over the way you've treated him, but he'll forgive you if you only start to act decently, Ginny. Go and apologize to him, and tell him everything you know about Malfoy. Then come home and stay for a nice long visit. We do miss you so. I worry about you in the city, heaven knows, and I suppose I've always known that something as dreadful as this would happen. But I'm always your dear Mum, and if you'll just come to your senses, this entire thing will be forgotten."

Ginny stared at the letter as it sizzled to ash. "What were you going to say, Blaise?'

"Er—that was rather loud, wasn't it?" Blaise asked awkwardly. "Wouldn't you like some more espresso? How about—"

"Just tell me."

Blaise cleared his throat. "I was going to say that on top of everything else, Draco managed to get Astoria Greengrass royally brassed off at him. She's an unholy bitch."

"Is it true?" asked Ginny, still staring at the ashes of the Howler. "Was he really engaged to her?"

"It's a bit complicated—"

"Just tell me."

"Yes. Yes, he has been. Was. I really don't know. For over a year." He looked at her shrewdly. "Maybe it's good that you know, Ginny. My best mate's got himself in a world of trouble, but there's something that I don't think has occurred to you, and it's that you have, too. You're a witness, so the Ministry did have the right to force you to take that test, and you escaped from them. You Stunned an official and left her lying on the floor—yes, I know it was only Luna Lovegood, but still. If you do anything to help Draco, they might even be able to get you for aiding and abetting a wanted criminal. You need to decide just how deep you want to get in here."

"Look, I have to warn Malfoy—" said Ginny.

"But you could send him an owl. There are untraceable ways to do it."

"All right, I have to find out what's really going on," she admitted.

"You could give up on that. On needing to know."

Ginny laughed. "No, I can't. I've never been able to do that."

"Even if it hurts you?" Blaise looked at her with unexpectedly serious eyes. "And even if you don't know what you really mean to him? Because I can't tell you the answer to that question, Gin. I've been his best mate since we were both three years old, but I don't know him well enough to tell you that. Nobody does."

"I suppose that giving up is what you're going to do," snapped Ginny.

"No," said Blaise. "We're best mates. I'll find a way. But think about what you want to risk for him, Ginny. Don't just go off on a hair-trigger. Really think. What the hell's that?" He frowned at the tap on a living room window. "Just a minute, Gin."

Ginny was left staring at an empty cup of espresso grounds next to the copy of the Daily Prophet on the table. Photograph-Ginny was sitting in the back seat of the shiny black Mercedes now, crooking her finger at photograph-Draco. He was climbing in with a smile; not a smirk, Ginny thought, but a real smile. Now he was putting his hands on her shoulders and pushing her back, almost laying her out underneath him on the back seat. The extremely large back seat. He'd clearly used some sort of charm on it, because it had turned into a kind of roomy low bed with space for a mini-bar and little glowing witchlights stuck into the walls. In fact, it was almost the size of a small hotel room. Now he was closing the car door on her!

"What are you doing?" demanded Ginny.

You can't come in, said photograph-Ginny.

No, you can't. I'm not the least bit interested in a threesome, real-Ginny, said photograph-Draco, even though it's you. Oh, I know they're supposed to be every man's dream, and I went through a bit of a phase when I was nineteen years old, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything, but I really don't care for them. He kissed photograph-Ginny. All I want is you.

Mm, Draco… moaned photograph-Ginny. She raised her little head. So it's really none of your business, she told Ginny.

"It's very much my business! Draco's about to have sex with you- with me, I mean!"

No, Draco's going to have sex with bme/b, said photograph-Ginny, putting an arm round photograph-Draco.

"But you are me—oh, this is the most surreal conversation I've ever had," groaned Ginny.

Could you two Ginnys get on with it? called photograph-Draco. This isn't exactly my idea of foreplay.

"This doesn't make any sense," said Ginny. "Does it somehow mean that I actually did have sex with the real Draco in the backseat of his Mercedes last night after all?"

No, it most certainly does not, said photograph-Draco, sounding insulted. I may be ruthless and cunning and less than completely honest at times, real-Ginny, but I'd never do that to anyone, much less you. You were drunk off your beautiful arse. You wouldn't have even known what was going on, and you couldn't have begun to appreciate my amazing skills. He kissed photograph-Ginny. Now you, on the other hand…

"Oh, then what about her? Isn't she drunk as well?" She glared at photograph-Ginny, who was throwing her head back and making little noises of pleasure as Draco nibbled on her neck.

Wizarding photographs can't get drunk. She knows exactly what she's doing.

Do I ever, said photograph-Ginny, winking. And I can't wait to do it.

"I'm sure you can't, you slag," snapped Ginny.

Photograph-Ginny looked very hurt. That's not true. I'm a virgin, because you are, she said. So this will be my first time. Because it would have been yours, too.

"You mean that my photograph can break the no-sex curse, but I can't?" gasped Ginny.

You're perfectly aware that that's hardly the truth, either, said photograph-Draco. You certainly can. Photograph-Ginny has made her choice, and you're just as free to make yours.

Ginny shook her head, blinking back sudden, fierce tears. "It's not like that. It's not that simple. It's not as if you know… unless… do you know, somehow?"

Photograph-Draco shrugged. I'm not a Magic-8 Ball. I was always dreadful at Divination. But you're going to see a lot of strange things coming up in your near future, Ginny Weasley.

"You do know something, then!"

Let's just say that it's amazing how much wizarding photographs know, photograph-Draco said evasively. Also paintings… statues… mosaics… drawings… portraits of authors on the dust jackets of books, even. Portraits more than anything else, though. We can't lie, Ginny. No Immortal can lie, and all images are immortal. You're an artist. You know that. You really ought to go to Florence and sign up for a private witches' showing of the Sistine Chapel someday; Adam and Eve have loads of dirt to dish about God. Why do you think all of Michelangelo's paintings always have such strategically placed folds of drapery?

"But then that means that you can't lie," said Ginny excitedly. "What does real-Draco actually think about Astoria Greengrass, or what does he feel, I suppose- what does she mean to him? And what about Marie? He said the name 'Marie'. I heard him, that night when I—" She blushed. "Well, never mind about that."

I know exactly what you did that night in that cottage, said photograph-Draco, smirking. I have all of real-Draco's memories, remember?

"Oh, dear gods," groaned Ginny. "Anyway, you've got to answer me, you've just got to. I have to know. Who's Marie? Is she connected with Astoria somehow? Is 'Marie' some sort of nickname for her? Does he love Astoria? I mean, I can't believe he does, but—and me, what about me?" The last question came out in a rush, the insane, impossible question, the one that she knew she would never, ever have asked the real Draco. Could never ask. "What does Draco feel for me?" she blurted.

But the photograph-Draco was already shaking his head. It's not going to be that easy, real-Ginny, he said.

"You said you couldn't lie! You have to tell me."

No, I don't, said photograph-Draco. I can't lie, but I am still Draco Malfoy, and all I can say is what he could and would have said to you, real-Ginny. And no matter how much he might want to, he couldn't answer the question you just asked. Not to mention that no Malfoy anywhere has ever been able to tell the complete truth.

Ginny let out a long sigh. "I think I knew all that," she admitted. "But I still want to find him. I'm on the run from the Ministry, after all; I might as well make it worth my while. All right—if you're somehow really Draco, where do you think he'd be?"

You say that I told you to wait for me?

Ginny nodded.

And it was right after Potter dared to lay hands on you? He scowled.

Photograph-Ginny hugged him. I'll bet he let go pretty fast.

"Oh, he did," said Ginny.

Photograph-Draco grinned. I suppose that I became all dark and broody and mysterious and lethal-looking. Dead-sexy, wasn't I?

"Yes," Ginny confessed. "But you almost frightened me a bit. You certainly did everyone else."

Not you, said photograph-Draco, speaking to her, holding and kissing photograph-Ginny. Never you. Then he put his head on one side, considering. I can't be sure exactly where I'd go. But if I expected you to have some idea of what I was talking about, it would have to be someplace that I knew the Ministry couldn't find, but that you'd have to figure out if you thought about long enough. My best guess is a place that's magically shielded in some way.

"I can't think of anywhere like that," said Ginny.

Perhaps someplace connected with an institution that hides things, Ginny, and keeps them safe, said photograph-Draco. I can't make it too easy for you, remember? He winked at her. Keep thinking. It'll come to you. But get there quick, because even though the Aurors can't get in, they might still surround it. Now I have one more thing to tell you. Lean down. Come very close.

Ginny brought her face almost to the paper, then gasped in surprise. Photograph-Draco had jumped up and given her a tiny, passionate kiss. She touched her lips. They throbbed with newsprint.

"What did you do that for?" she asked, astonished.

I had to find out what it was like to kiss you. Rather overwhelming, but I find that I don't envy real-Draco. I've got my own girl, and she's waiting for me. You're going to find your own Draco, real-Ginny. If you search for him hard enough, you'll find him, and he'll find you.

Goodbye, said photograph-Ginny , waving as she rolled up a window.

"Have a nice time," said Ginny stiffly.

Oh, I will. I'm quite, quire sure that I'm about to have really astonishing sex with Draco Malfoy, preceded by loads of delicious foreplay.

You will, murmured photograph-Draco's voice from behind her. I promise at least fifteen orgasms that will make you see the entire pantheon of forgotten Norwegian gods of Valhalla.

Oh, I'm bso/b glad that things didn't work out with Michael or Colin or Blaise, said Ginny, leaning back so that he could caress her neck and shoulders.

"So am I," admitted Ginny. "Er… have you had a chance to actually see what's under those evil trousers of his yet? Only I can't help wondering if my guesses were accurate."

No, but even when he's three inches high, the proportions seem as if they're going to be rather bloody amazing , said Ginny, shuddering voluptuously. I can't wait.

Neither can I. But I have to, and she doesn't! I'll be waiting forever, for all I know. Ginny's friendly feelings for her photographed self died considerably. "Good for you," she snapped. "But if that's all you want, then why don't you just go and work as a companion at the Crystal Palace? I certainly never knew I had the potential to be such a whore."

That's not fair, and you know it, photograph-Ginny said softly. Ginny, if you want real-Draco, you can have him as well. Not just the sex, but everything, everything that he has, everything that he is. Just trust him. Believe in him. Take the risk. That's what I did. I'll never regret it. Neither will you.

"Wait," exclaimed Ginny. "How do you know? You can't be sure. You just can't. Hold on, you've got to explain—"

The little car door slammed. The Mercedes zoomed off, out of the picture.

"'Trust Draco Malfoy'," muttered Ginny. "That's all very easy to say when you're a two-dimensional photograph!" And, her unruly, aching heart added, when he's all alone with you, in your arms, and there doesn't seem to be anyone else in the world. That doesn't really seem to be the situation just now, does it?

No, decided Ginny, it didn't. Especially not when Luna was hurtling in through the window and crashing into Blaise's arms, and they were both toppling over backwards across the living room floor.

"Er… how about a nice shag, Lovegood?" Blaise asked rather feebly, in a shell-shocked sort of way.

"Not right this moment, I don't think," Luna said matter-of-factly, "but later, perhaps. Maybe for hours and hours and hours. What an interesting cabinet that is. I've never seen examples of latex molded into so very many shapes. Were they all molded directly from life? It looks like those were all from your penis, Blaise. It's a very nice one. I did get a peek once during sixth year when the door to the Slytherin changing rooms wasn't entirely closed, and I just happened to be strolling by at the time."

"A girl after my own heart," said Blaise, dusting himself off and offering a hand to Luna.

"Thanks awfully," said Luna, scrambling up. "By the way, I thought I'd just come and tell both of you that a team of crack Aurors from the Department of Mysteries is on its way in search of Draco Malfoy, and that they may very well be licensed to kill, or at least to do all sorts of un-nice things. You might want to step out for coffee or something similar." She beamed at them both. "Aren't you glad that they fired me, so that I can come and tell you all that?"

Next chapter: Guess who we're going to see again? Could it be...


	12. A Wild Gringotts Chase

A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers!

As I wrote in a reply to a review by the fabulous SometimeSelkie… there are a few things about the ffnet version of DDD that might even be very subtly improved over the FIA one. Nothing major at ALL, but there were just a few times when I wished later that I'd foreshadowed this or that a little bit better and so forth. So y'all are getting the improved version.

"Bloody overjoyed," said Blaise. "How the hell do I get myself into these things again?"

"Malfoy's been your best mate since you were both three years old, remember?" said Ginny.

"But that's only gone on so long because I spent so many years trying to find out for myself just how big his tackle really is. If it wasn't for that—"

"You'd still be his best friend," said Luna. "Even if the bait on his hook was the size of Harry's."

"How on earth do you know about Harry?" asked Ginny, startled.

"Stories get around, even the ones that I'd so much rather not hear. The point is that I think it would be a very good idea to get out of here."

"Turned out of my own flat, I like that—" Blaise began indignantly.

"Trust me, you'd like being at the business end of Harry Potter's bigger wand even less," said Ginny.

"Either wand would be one to avoid," agreed Blaise. "But where do we go?"

Ginny chewed her lip, thinking. "I have to find Draco," she finally said. "I just can't live with myself unless I do. At least I've figured out that much from what the photograph-me said."

"Are you starting to feel any signs of beginning delirium?" Luna asked her.

"I wouldn't be surprised," Ginny admitted. "But I have to find out what's going on with Astoria, and I have to find out what really happened last night, and I have to know what he meant when he said he wanted me to wait for him, and... oh, I just have to."

"I don't know about all the rest, but if you spend your time waiting around for boys to decide if they're going to do something or other," said Luna, "then you just might be waiting all your life. I think you spent rather enough time doing that for Harry, don't you?" She laid a hand on the back of Ginny's forehead. "I don't know. She feels like she has a bit of a fever to me."

Ginny wrenched away. "Don't do that," she said irritably. "Speaking of waiting, do you want to sit here twiddling our thumbs until the Aurors storm in here, wands out? Or do you want to do something?"

"You still haven't suggested anything," Luna pointed out.

"I'm suggesting it now. Luna, Blaise, you go and post lookout. Keep an eye on those Aurors, and text me if you see them. They can intercept Messaging spells, but not Muggle cell phones, is what I'm guessing. I'm going to find Malfoy."

"Do you know where he is?" asked Blaise.

"Yes," said Ginny. She sincerely hoped that her neck didn't flush as red as it usually did when she told really whopping lies.

"You're asking us to get in almost as much trouble as you will, you know," said Luna.

"You don't have to do it," said Ginny. "You don't have to do anything!"

"Look, we haven't said we won't," Blaise said uncomfortably. "It's just that I do have to wonder if , uh…"

"If I've gone completely mad?" Ginny snapped.

"No," Luna said quietly. "But, Ginny, have you really, truly thought this entire thing through?"

No. Ginny closed her eyes briefly.

They all slipped down the back stairs; there was an untraceable private exit that Blaise kept for "my more unusual nocturnal visitors", as he explained but did not elaborate upon. Ginny was silently thankful for that. Luna seemed to be asking questions in an undertone and taking notes in a tiny notebook, but at least she didn't have to hear about any of it.

"Coast is clear," whispered Luna once they were in the back garden. Ginny cast the Illusionment charm over herself and started off, trying to look confident when she felt anything but.

She paced restlessly down the almost empty side street, wondering where on earth to go now. Her flat was right out, of course; she already knew that. Draco's flat would be an even worse choice, not that she had any clear idea of how to get back there from here. Colin? No… there was no reason for Draco to go there, and Ginny was perfectly aware that she had no right to drag even more friends into the appalling mess she'd somehow managed to create for herself. _Shite, I suppose that means that Blaise Zabini's a friend now, on top of everything else! It just gets worse and worse._

There was Astoria's place, of course, wherever it was. That thought was so awful that it stopped her in her tracks briefly. But that really didn't make any sense. Draco Malfoy had to know that expecting her to meet him at Astoria Greengrass's flat was bound to end up in murder, mayhem, and several dozen handfuls of different shades of blonde hair all over the floor. It was bound to be even more heavily staked out by the Department of Mysteries, anyway. Madame Lonelyheart's Coffeehouse? No… much too public. Sans and Serif? Same problem. Maybe back at the Ministry itself, because it was the last place the Aurors would think to look? No, that might work if they only had Harry to deal with, but the idea certainly wouldn't have slipped Hermione's mind. And if she used the nearest Apparition point, that would probably alert anyone who might be trying to track her.

A gust of wind blew a stray copy of the Daily Prophet past her feet; she saw that the photograph frame was blank now, every bit as bare as the street she was walking along. It was oppressively, strangely empty in a way that gave Ginny an odd feeling of urgency, almost more so than if she'd actually been running from Aurors. And why wasn't there any trace of any of them? She'd been out for at least several minutes; she could feel each precious second ticking by, and Luna hadn't yet texted to warn her. Ginny ran her wand over her arms and muttered a few words; the Illusion charm crackled a strong blue. Her suspicions were raised instantly. If any Aurors had made even the slightest attempt to find her, it should have glowed green. _Something's wrong. I just know it_. She punched at her Muggle phone.

ne signs yet?

no, Luna answered. Odd isnt it?

yes, Ginny texted back. where r they? y havent I seen-

She broke off. Zane Smith's sandy brown head had just disappeared around the corner.

Ginny raced after the tall, thin man. He was at the tail end of a large group of Aurors with Harry at their head, and they were all ignoring her completely, not even glancing back or looking in any direction; when she ran her wand down her body, the Illusion spell still shone blue_. They're not even trying to find me,_ she thought incredulously. They were headed towards the Apparition point at the end of the block, she realized. One by one, they all vanished into it. She skidded to a stop. There was maybe thirty seconds to decide what she was going to do. If she left right now, she could simply follow them, tracking where they'd gone. The problem was that if they had even the least bit of interest in nabbing her, they almost certainly could and would. But if she waited, she'd never find them.

She took a deep breath, and she jumped into the Apparition point.

The entire world spun round her, round and round and took her breath away and she expected this from Apparition, she'd always felt it, but this time, it just kept spinning and she just couldn't get it to stop. A shadowy figure spun next to her, so indistinct that she couldn't even tell if it was male or female but it had fair hair; horrified, she realized that it had to be one of the Aurors, and that if they really wanted to catch her, the game was up. Then she landed on a hard surface and all the breath got knocked out of her and she tried to grab onto something but there wasn't anything and she found that she was scrabbling frantically on a gravel slope. A pair of scuffed brown leather boots tromped in front of her, and she dug her hands into the gravel as hard as she could and finally managed to stop herself. When she looked up, she saw the back of Zane Smith's head. He was walking at the rear of the group of Aurors, and a goblin scampered alongside of them.

"-most irregular this is, allow it I cannot!" he said in a high, piping, rather desperate voice.

It was Crumblygrotts, realized Ginny, the same goblin who'd originally approved her loan for the kiln and the studio rental. She must be at Gringott's.

"Oh, you'll allow it, all right," said Harry's voice from the head of the group. Ginny had to crane her neck to be absolutely sure it was him; he didn't even bother to turn his head back to speak as he stalked grimly down the slope.

"Work this matter out we can, sure I am… perhaps some financial arrangement come to we could," the goblin said coaxingly.

Harry's face darkened. Oh, that was the wrong thing to say, thought Ginny. "I don't need any of your money, do you think money matters to me compared with catching him?" he snarled, coming to a dead stop. "Do you know how long I've been waiting for this chance—do you have any idea—"

"Harry, come on. We've just got to leave now," Hermione said urgently. "He's ahead of us; honestly, I'm not even sure how far. If we don't get there before he does, we'll never catch him!" She gestured to the rest of the Aurors. "All of you, start getting in, now. Split up so there are no more than two or three to a cart. And hurry up about it. We don't have a moment to waste." Torches set high in the walls sputtered fitfully, casting long shadows on a line of small carts disappearing into darkness on a track at the bottom of the slope.

"Right, right." Harry leaned down, towards the goblin. "Listen, Crumblygrotts, you may not realize how serious this is, but you'll find out if you don't cooperate."

"But five thousand years of Gringott's reputation, at stake is," whimpered the goblin, wringing his hands. "None of our customers trust us anymore will, if word of this out gets—"

"I don't care," said Harry. "If you don't want the entire Ministry down on your head, you'll bloody well let us through! Do you want the Department of Mysteries to start investigating just how many former Death Eaters are hiding Dark artifacts here, in those secret family vaults?"

The little goblin blanched a pale green.

"Yeah, well, I didn't think so," said Harry with satisfaction. "We've got a criminal to catch, and I really don't care how long the Malfoys have been loyal customers of yours." He turned back to the line of Aurors. "Come on, let's get out of here!"

They're tracking Draco, Ginny realized in a flash. They had to be trying to catch him before he could reach the family vault; nothing else made sense. But how had they known where he was in the first place?

The Aurors were starting to pile into the carts; she followed them, stumbling over the loose gravel, praying that the spell kept them from hearing her. The cell phone vibrated softly in her pocket, and she pulled it out and glanced at it.

Aurors at Gringotts. Draco 2.

Thanks for the valuable information, Luna, she thought.

I know she texted back. Following them.

! U idiot. Stay where you are! Dean.

I cant, she punched in.

They found him thru Imperius test link. TROUBLE 4 u. STAY.

Ginny let her hand fall. You need to decide just how deep you want to get in here, Blaise had said to her. And now Dean had somehow involved himself with this entire mess, too; she hadn't forced him to do it, she hadn't even asked him, but if it wasn't for her, it never would have happened. _Oh, gods, what am I doing?_ But she had to decide one way or the other, and quickly.

Ginny looked up and met Crumblygrotts' eyes. He saw her; she realized it at once, with a pang of terror. _Why was I ever thick enough to think that an Illusion charm would fool a goblin at Gringotts?_ Maybe she could get a nice cell at Azkaban right to Draco's. Were conjugal visits allowed? But how could they be, really, when they weren't married, she wasn't his girlfriend, they hadn't shagged, and they'd never even shared a single kiss? Her mind ranged for a single mad instant over the idea of a romantic first time at Azkaban, perhaps aided by asking all the Dementors to keep their backs turned, before she realized that the goblin was keeping his mouth firmly shut. Crumblygrotts gave her a minute nod and beckoned his hand.

Ginny widened her eyes. Me? she mouthed.

Her cell phone buzzed again. DM your help need he does. Come to his vault U may.

"Who knew that goblins could text," muttered Ginny.

Crumblygrotts smiled. A goblin's smile was far from an attractive sight, but that, Ginny thought, definitely qualified as the least of her problems now.

"What are you smirking about?" Harry was asking the goblin now. "And are you sure that's the quickest way?"

"Only so fast can we go towards the lowest vaults, believe me you must, sir," Crumblygrotts said pleadingly as Hermione and Zane Smith crammed him into a cart.

"I think it is the fastest way, Harry," said Hermione.

"It had better be," Harry replied grimly. "'Mione, just think- if we catch Malfoy in time, he goes straight to a holding cell in Azkaban. He'd stay there until trial and you know we'd have the evidence by then, God, to finally get him on something, after he's bought his way out of every charge for years, slithered out of everything like the snake he is, what else has he ever done his entire life—"

Hermione put her hand over Harry's. "I know. I know. It's all right, Harry. We'll get him now."

The two of them exchanged a shaky smile, and in it, Ginny saw Draco's bright head bowed, turned a dull silver as he sat slumped on a cot in a cell in Azkaban, waiting to hear a footstep that never came. He waited and waited, and finally he lost hope, and his gray eyes went blank, and he became a beautiful shell of everything that he had ever been. The first cart started up with a jerk. Ginny didn't think twice. She grabbed onto the back of it, said a quick Sticking charm, and hung on, trying not to remember everything she'd ever heard about dragons guarding the lower vaults of Gringotts.

The cart picked up frantic speed, and Ginny flattened herself to the side, struggling to keep her eyes open enough to see where they were going. It was hopeless. She'd been down here only once before with her father, and the Weasley vault was near the surface. They'd taken a short trip and opened it with a key. This time, they spun down and down and her stomach dropped further and further, and the cart rattled until she thought it was going to fly apart. Hermione's cloak was flying in front of her and she grabbed onto it at one point; the other girl turned round briefly and Ginny shrank back, sure the spell was wearing thin and she'd been seen, but they all went over a bump then and Hermione's head went down and Harry's arm went round her, and nobody seemed to be in any shape to notice anything. Zane Smith and Hestia Jones were right behind her, and Ginny did everything she could to avoid him too; she knew that she had to be smacking into people constantly, but with any luck at all, the ride was too chaotic for anyone to notice much of anything. There was someone else next to her too, a vague shadowy figure with fair hair, but she assumed it was another Auror who she just didn't know. The same one who went through the Apparition point with me? Funny. I thought that was Zane Smith. But he's behind me now, so it can't be—oh, so what- She certainly wasn't going to worry about his—or her—or maybe its identity when there were so very many other things to worry about, such as oh, the fact that the cart was about to—

"I told you that we're jumping the track!" Harry yelled.

"No, oh, no, far too dangerous that is!" Crumblygrotts yelled back.

"I don't care! Look, over there!" Harry stabbed a finger to the right, and Ginny raised her head to see through the maelstrom of swirling cloaks and darkness. Another cart was zooming off, further down, on another set of interconnected rails. Something flashed in it briefly, like a bright silver coin, but much larger.

"Malfoy! He's in it, I saw him. You jump the track,right now," snarled Harry.

Ginny held her breath. The cart took off in a tremendous leap, floating through space for one long, long frightening moment. Something next to her shook loose and fell, Ginny could have sworn, something or someone, and she wondered guiltily if it was the unknown Auror next to her_. Well, it's not as I pushed them, whoever they were! Or are. Hopefully, 'are' is still the correct word. You'd think that the goblins would've thought of accidents just like that happening. Maybe there's a giant net down there, or something…_ Then the cart crashed onto the next track with a bone-shattering crunch. The other cart was just ahead of them now, and yes! Yes, Draco was driving it, wrapped in a long black cloak, his face tense and set.

Crunch! Their cart rammed his. Draco swerved, the track gave a little shake, and he nimbly avoided them.

"Oh, no you don't. You always were a rotten Seeker, Malfoy…" muttered Harry.

CRUNCH!

Ginny winced. She really, really hoped that the goblins didn't plan to use either one of these particular carts, ever again.

Crumblygrotts wrung his hands. "Oh… oh… so much dreadful property damage there will be! The worst since the dreadful goblin wars of 1064, when Gollum and the hobbits involved became, and Middle Earth Insurance Company pay would not—"

"Shut it," said Harry. "You get Malfoy, or the Ministry will make sure there's worse damage to Gringotts business than that!"

They were running on parallel tracks now. Draco was clearly using every trick he could think of with his cart, but their own was going just a little bit faster; probably, Ginny thought, because of some sort of goblin magic that Crumblygrotts was being forced to use. And when she looked ahead, she saw that the parallel tracks were running out. Oh gods. They're going to catch him. Unless-

There was only one thing she could think of to do, and unless she did it quickly, Ginny knew that even the insane, do-or-die Weasley nerve would fail her, because this particular trick fell a little too decisively on the "die" side of the equation.

Their cart was almost flush with his now. She stood up as much as she could, crouching low. Crumblygrotts gave her a completely horrified look. She ignored it. Then she jumped.

The other cart snatched itself past her and she grappled with the door; she would not fall, would not, and somehow in the middle she found herself grabbing at Draco's fingers. He swore and crashed her up against the wooden side with one hand.

"I won't allow you to do this to me," he said in a low, cold voice, his face a vicious mask of anger. "You have destroyed my life, and hers, or you've given it your best attempt anyway, and now you've followed me here, and I will not allow—"

Then he blinked, and both of his hands reached out and felt her arms and shoulders upper chest, much more gently. "What the hell is this?" he asked. "Weasley?"

"No time to explain!" said Ginny. "Steering! Give me!" Without waiting for permission, she grabbed the little wheel.

Harry was completely parallel with them now. She swerved Draco's cart away from him slightly. He shouted something at Crumblygrotts, and his cart followed. She swerved again. He followed them again. Swerve. Follow. Swerve. Follow. Harry leaned over from the other cart, his hand reaching for its side, no more than an inch from grabbing onto them.

"Ginny, come on," he yelled to them. "I don't know what he's done to you, but if you stop now, if you cooperate, if you turn him in, you won't get in any trouble at all—it's all Malfoy's fault, I know it is, none of it's yours, but I've got him now, there's nothing more you can do—"

"Oh, yes there is," she said. Ginny gave him a huge smile, and jammed the wheel all the way to the right. I can't really say that Harry was a rotten Seeker, she thought, with grudging honesty. But the problem is that he always expects to catch the Snitch, and he doesn't know how to think in any other way. He only ever knows how to think in one way, really.

"Fuck, Weasley, what have you done now?" she heard Draco groan beside her. Then the cart plunged down into darkness, and really, thought Ginny, it wasn't the best time in the world to ask any more questions at all.

Not that this fact kept him from asking another one, right after they'd finally crashed to the bottom, and before she'd even had half a chance to catch her breath.

"Shite, Weasley, why didn't you wait for me?"

"Wh—what?" asked Ginny groggily. He was sprawled half on top of her. She could feel the weight of his body pressing her into the ground. They weren't face to face, which was probably why she could manage to get out even one coherent word, she thought.

"It's a simple question. I told you to wait for me to come to you, and you couldn't even manage to do that," snapped Draco. "Instead, you've chased me through Gringotts like a gods-damned idiot, it's a miracle you didn't get yourself killed-"

"I wasn't chasing you! Harry and a rather large group of Aurors were chasing you, as I hope you bothered to notice, Malfoy. And you can just get off of me!" She struggled out from under him. "Where are we? I mean, where on earth did we end up?"

"You might have thought of that before you randomly steered the cart off a cliff in the dungeons of Gringotts," said Draco. "By the way, between now and the events of this morning, Weasley, I will never, ever get the hearing back in my left ear, I'll have you know."

She might, just might have done some screaming during that long, long freefall, thought Ginny. Not that she was about to admit it to him.

"Lumos Maxima," he said, and yellow light illuminated the space around them both.

He was sitting across from her on the bottom of what looked like a limestone cave, surrounded by the ruins of a cart. How could Draco Malfoy manage to make even rising from a sprawled position look elegant? But he did, somehow. He offered her his hand, scowling.

Ginny took it, uncomfortably aware of its warmth, its strength, its sheer size. She'd gotten mud all over his fingers, and when she looked down at herself, she groaned silently. She had mud everywhere, too. She tried to brush off her bum and winced. The fall had not been well cushioned.

"A little sore?" asked Draco.

"A bit," Ginny admitted.

"I'd like to be of help, but I'm afraid I don't have any murtlap tea at the moment. It's a little thin on the ground around here." Draco stuck his hands in his pockets, his eyebrows drawn together into an ominous line.

_He's really, really giving me a dirty look. And even his dirty looks are sexy; there's no other way to put it, is there? Oh, he doesn't look happy with me… well, I don't care! _

"Malfoy, I've got some dreadfully important things to tell you," she said. "You've got to listen. I don't know how much time we have—"

"They can wait just a bit," said Draco. "You haven't answered my question."

"Uh… I know that you said I was supposed to wait for you," said Ginny. "But I just couldn't."

Draco gave a long sigh. "You just couldn't. Has any Weasley ever been able to do as they're told?"

"No," said Ginny. "But listen to me, can't you? It's bloody important."

"Whatever it is, you're wrong. It's not. Not compared to the danger you've put yourself in by illegally entering Gringotts—how did you get here, anyway?"

"I Apparated. I followed the traces of the Aurors."

A muscle in Draco's jaw jumped. "Lovely! Do you realize that you've earned yourself some bloody inconvenient question-and-answer sessions at the Ministry just for that, if they decided that they wanted to press charges?" His lips tightened. "Not that Potter would do any such thing to you, of course."

Ginny laughed harshly. "Oh, that's what you think."

Something happened in his face then, she thought, some sort of change too subtle to put her finger on, except that it reminded her of how he'd looked in the alley behind Le Bas Blue when Harry had put his hand on her arm. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not very popular with Harry just now," muttered Ginny. She wanted to tell the story in order, and she was determined to tell it her way. "Why do you care, anyway?"

Draco's voice lightened, but his face remained tense. "Malfoys live up to their obligations," he said. "Loki only knows how this situation came about, Weasley, but I'm now under some sort of obligation to you. I can' t permit Potter to railroad you on some ridiculous shite or other. Anyway, do you think you're ready to grace me now with your explanation for why you couldn't just safely wait for me? I'd have sent you an owl."

"Because if I'd waited around until you deigned to show up," said Ginny, "the Aurors would have caught you first. And then you'd be waiting for me in Azkaban, Malfoy."

He laughed. "Don't be ridiculous. You're a Weasley; you love lost causes and all-or-nothing battles, but don't waste it on me. I'd have been perfectly all right, with or without your Chaser stunts."

"No, you wouldn't have been, and you won't," she persisted. "Malfoy, listen to me. You would've been caught by Harry and the Aurors if it wasn't for me, and you don't know what they were planning to do to you; I heard them talking. They would have taken you to Azkaban. They would have kept you there."

Draco shook his head. "It wouldn't have mattered. They couldn't have made a charge stick. Really, Weasley, weren't you listening when I informed them of my rights earlier? Potter would have blustered about, and they would have taken me in to the Ministry, I suppose. He'd have his chance to get off, and Granger would have her chance to wet her knickers, so I suppose they would have got their two minutes out of it in the loo or wherever it is they go for their romantic interludes. Then they would have had to let me leave."

His tone was light and mocking, and Ginny knew that she was close to tears."No! Malfoy, will you just listen to me? They dragged me to St. Mungo's today and forced me to undergo an Imperius test! That's the part you don't know about yet—"

Draco sucked in his breath sharply. "Potter did what?"

There it was, there it was again, Ginny thought crazily, Draco's dark and almost-frightening face, and every time she saw it, she knew that she could never forget it again, as solid and true as if it were the real one and the light, cheerful, charming, flippant mask was never anything more than a front.

"They made me take the test," she stammered. "A rape test too—"

"You mean that Potter thought I would do that to you? Against your will?"

And there was that Draco's cold, clipped, frightening voice, dark and precise and dangerous, and the menacing body looming over her with panther-like grace, and the steel hands, gripping her arms with a strength that should have been painful and yet somehow not hurting her at all.

"I told him, them, that you wouldn't. I knew you wouldn't. I knew you didn't, but it's more than that, I knew you never would," said Ginny.

"Never," his voice said in her ear. "Never."

"They were both negative," whispered Ginny. "The tests."

"Of course they were. You could not have believed that I would do either of those things to you," whispered the voice that didn't sound like Draco's, and yet it did. It was the voice she had heard when he spoke to her in the corridor on the night of the last battle at Hogwarts, the night that she had almost given in to him and to herself. She closed her eyes. For a single mad moment, she wished that she had, that she would, right now.

He pulled back from her. She felt the loss of warmth. How strange, that he should be so warm, when his eyes and face and body were like ice. "That's how they traced me here," he said flatly. "You're in danger now, Weasley."

"But listen to me, Malfoy. You're the one in danger! They were planning to bring you in on that Imperius charge so they could hold you for everything else, and I'll bet they can still find some trumped-up way to do it."

"Yes. I'd figured that out. The point is you, Weasley. You. They can charge you with aiding and abetting a criminal. I had no right to do this to you, no right at all," muttered Draco.

Everything about this side of him was different, thought Ginny. Even his speech patterns. It was as if he set aside all of his elaborate affectations, and stripped down to a steely core. "You didn't," she insisted. "I did. I followed Harry and the Aurors here; nobody made me do that. I'm the one who's dragged my friends into this whole disaster. You didn't have anything to do with it. You're giving yourself a bit too much credit, Malfoy—hey, what do you think you're doing?"

"Getting you out of here," said Draco. "I'll find one of the goblins, and he'll take you somewhere safe."

"But how will you get out?"

"Any cart with a Malfoy in it is charmed to head directly towards the Malfoy vault. It's a short walk from here."

"But why were you going there in the first place?" Ginny tried unsuccessfully to dig her heels into the powdery dirt floor.

"That's my business."

"But, but Draco—" Ginny made a grab for a stalactite. Or is that a stalagmite? she wondered fleetingly. Never could keep them straight. "What if the Aurors do make it down here? There are so many of them. Harry, and Hermione, Zane Smith, Hestia Jones, I saw a couple of others, and there was one who I think was even under some kind of Illusion charm, sort of like I was—I couldn't tell much about him, at least I think it was a him. Tall, with blond hair, I think. I don't even know what happened to him. I sort of lost track after the cart fell off the cliff, or whatever it was that happened—"

Draco stopped dead in his tracks. "What?"

Maybe she was wrong, Ginny decided. Maybe this Draco really did frighten even her after all. At least, the look on his face managed to do the trick, for just a minute. "I—uh—" she began.

"I heard what you said,' he muttered. "All right. All right, Weasley. We're both getting out of here now."

"But you said you had to get to the Malfoy vault. Wasn't that the point of your going here in the first place?"

"The plans have changed," Draco said grimly.

"But where—"

"We're going where I planned to meet you in the first place. And if you'd waited, I would have come to you there." Draco stopped again, and Ginny stumbled, falling against him slightly. He scanned her face, and then he smiled. The sight of a smile on this grim, cold Draco's face was shocking. But beautiful, Ginny thought. He's more beautiful than ever this way. It's like seeing the devil's smile. Oh, gods, what's wrong with me?

"Thank you, Weasley, for coming to me," he said softly.

His hands were still around her wrists like Muggle handcuffs, trapping them. His thumbs came up and caressed the sensitive inner skin, where her pulse beat. Ginny bit her lip. She'd felt a shameful tug between her legs at that firm touch, at the sensation of Draco's hands encircling her slender wrists; gods, what was wrong with her? There they were, desperately trying to escape from the dungeons of Gringotts, chased by her power-mad ex-boyfriend and a bunch of Aurors who probably really were all licensed to kill, and an image had flashed through her traitorous mind of those strong male hands pinning her wrists down to a mattress!

"Now let's get the hell out of here while we can still do it in one piece," said Draco, and Ginny nodded. He gave her wrist a pull, which was a good thing, she thought gratefully, because her legs had turned to jelly, just for the moment, and a jump-start was very helpful.

As they ran past the stalagmites, Ginny couldn't help noticing how large and tall and erect they were, and that this might, just might remind her of something else. She rather thought that she'd finally found a reliable memory aid to remind her of the difference between them and stalactites from now on.


	13. Curious Ginny and Her Crate

A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers!

Draco clamped Ginny's fingers in his, pulling her along after him, and they ran on and on through dim passageways and under arches, weaving through mazes of stone blocks and bricks, Above them, on a higher level, Ginny could just barely see the dim shapes of some of the largest and oldest vaults. Then they'd passed all of them, and the passage narrowed even further into darkness. Ginny's skin crawled.

"Where—are- we going, Malfoy?"she panted. "Do you even know?"

"Of course I know," he said in a clipped voice. "We're headed for a remote Apparition point. Hurry up, Weasley."

"But I don't hear Harry, or Hermione, or—any of the others—so why do we have to go so fast, can't we stop for just a—"

"Because I'm responsible for your safety, that's why!" he snapped. "Don't stop, Weasley, whatever you do!"

"We've run—this whole way, can't we rest for just a—"

"No, we can't." Draco gave one short, sharp glance over his shoulder. "We've been bloody lucky so far; I'm not going to push our luck even one inch further. Now come on."

And I thought I was in such good shape, Ginny thought ruefully. Her chest felt like it was on fire. "Honestly, Malfoy, if anybody was following us, I would've heard them. I think my legs are going to give out. Why can't we just take one second —"

Then she stopped. She did hear footsteps in the distance, and faint whispering. She groaned. She'd know that voice anywhere.

"Damn it, I'm telling you they're down here. I don't know what Malfoy's done to her, but I'm getting her away from him, and then his arse is landing in Azkaban and he's never getting out again. Shacklebolt will listen to us once he sees what kind of evidence we've got!"

A strange wave of weakness rolled over her. After it passed, her legs felt like they were being torn apart by miniature Nifflers in search of unwilling blood donations. She tried to force herself up anyway. "You're right. It's Harry. Oh fuck, we've got to get to that Apparition point before he does. If he gets hold of you—"

Draco gave a sigh of what she could have sworn was relief. "So that's all it is, then. Potter's shown up just in time to fail to save the day, has he?"

"What do you mean? He's going to catch us! Well, he's going to catch you, because I think he's still convinced that you somehow have me under your evil spell even though the Imperius test was negative, so you're the one he's going to drag to Azkaban. How can you be so calm?"

"Because he's not going to do any such thing. Actually, if he were anyone else, I'd almost feel sorry for him, because he'll have to get past the Malfoy dragon to get out of here now. Invictus is quite a bit less amiable than the one who apparently grew soppy over him at the end of his seventh year."

"Then why were we in such a hurry?" demanded Ginny.

Draco gave her a strange smile. "Let's just say that you never know what sort of dragons you're going to find in the dungeons of Gringott's. Up you get, Weasley." He reached out to pull her to her feet, and then he froze.

Ginny looked back at him blankly. There was fear on his face, real fear. She'd seen it. The emotion had flashed across it so fast that she was sure anyone else would have missed it. But I'm starting to know Draco Malfoy's face, she thought. He looked past her, over her shoulder. She wondered what he saw. She turned her head to look, but she didn't see anything. Or did she? Maybe, just maybe, there was a shadow slipping behind a rock, a tall shadow, and a glint of silver in the dim light.

"Oh, fuck," he said, and then he yanked her up so hard that she gave a shocked cry of pain.

Her muscles were starting to give out, she stumbled and almost fell against Draco, in another second he was going to be dragging her behind him on the ground and she set her teeth in grim determination and pushed her bursting lungs and flaming legs to their limits, because she would not, would not allow that to happen. Why—why are we—who did you see, is someone chasing us, are we in danger- she tried to ask, but she couldn't form words, she had no breath left. I can't run anymore, I can't, I can't, she tried to yell, but her heart was pounding so loudly that she couldn't even hear the words in her own head. A haze of red shimmered in front of her eyes, and she could barely even see Draco's bright head through it, but still she had to keep going, keep going, because he was frightened and desperate, and she had never really even imagined seeing him afraid, so something must have gone terribly wrong.

Her foot snagged on a rock, and the ground rushed up to meet her. Ginny closed her eyes and smelled earth and limestone, and knew that nothing short of a miracle was getting her up, ever again. A big hand shook her shoulder, and Draco's voice swore something. Then he scooped her up in his arms and held her to his chest.

"Put your arms around me, Weasley, and you'd better hold on tight," he ordered, and with what felt like the last of her strength, she did.

Ginny couldn't remember Side-along Apparition ever feeling this bad. She'd never liked it, but that awful squeezing stomach-turned-inside-out sensation had never gone on so hideously long, and the dizzying vertigo had never spun her round and round and round until she was sure that she'd never even begin to be able to guess at which way was up or down or sideways ever again. She wasn't even sure when it ended, because her head was still spinning, and she knew that if she opened her eyes so much as a crack, she'd throw up.

She buried her face in something soft and warm. Mmm. Smells like chocolate. Ooh, not that I want to even think about food right now… She burrowed deeper. Beneath the warm cloth, it was firm and just a bit yielding, and she heard a steady heartbeat. When she reached up her hand to trace the flat plane, she realized that it was a male chest. Draco's chest, under Draco's cloak. She would not throw up all over Draco's chest.

That resolution made, Ginny tried to sit up. The room promptly spun on its axis around her, and she fell back into Draco's lap with a sigh. He moved to make room for her so that she was lying on his legs, and she tried not to think about how easily she could get used to this position. Although it would add to the atmosphere if I didn't want to throw up quite so much. He laid a hand on her forehead, and she closed her eyes again.

Antivomitus, he murmured, and her stomach eased. She blinked at a low, wood beamed ceiling. Why did it look familiar?

"Don't sit up quite yet, Weasley," said Draco. "I'm sure that you probably feel rather dreadful. You ought to eat something in a few minutes, but perhaps not just now."

"No," admitted Ginny. "Why do I feel so horrible, though? All we really did was a few minutes of running; it hardly seems like that should've been enough to cause all of this."

A muscle jumped in Draco's jaw. "It wasn't. You were being magically weakened."

"But why? I mean, what caused it? Did it have anything to do with that dragon you were talking about—the Malfoy dragon?"

"Yes," said Draco. "Yes, it did. That dragon was entirely responsible for it. That's why I wanted to get you out of there, Ginny."

There'd been such a strange look on his face when he'd said that, she thought. And yet she'd had the strangest feeling, herself, that he was being completely truthful with her in that moment. She didn't sense any deception in him at all. It gave her an eerie sensation, and she wasn't even sure that she wanted to know more, just then. How odd. A Weasley not wanting to know more about anything. "Where are we?" she asked, changing the subject. "Is it that place you were talking about earlier, the one where you were going to meet me?"

Draco gave a long sigh. "No," he said. "No, it isn't."

"Then where are we?" Ginny tried to raise her head, to glance round, and she winced. "Oh, I've got such a dreadful headache." But even the little bit she'd seen of the walls looked familiar, somehow. "Have I been here before?"

"I'll make you a potion a bit later," said Draco evasively.

"I have been here, haven't I?"

"Weasley, I need to explain that I had no choice but to bring you here. I had to come here, and if I'd left you anywhere in London, anywhere at all, it simply wouldn't have been safe. You might have been found, and I couldn't allow that to happen—"

Ginny glared at him. "Damn it, Malfoy, where have you brought me? Are we sitting around in a cozy spot at Azkaban waiting for the Dementors to pop in, or what?"

"I had to bring you here," Draco went on, staring past her. Ginny wondered if he was even talking to her anymore. "But I will keep you safe. I will do anything I can, anything I have to. Nobody's going to touch you. I won't allow—I won't let—"

Ginny reached up, grabbed a handful of his cloak, and dragged his head down to hers. "Malfoy, my other hand is in a very strategic location right now, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. If you don't want any unfortunate accidents to happen, you're going to tell me where we are."

Draco broke off, looked down at her, and gulped. "You wouldn't."

Of course not, thought Ginny. It would be like taking a hammer to Michelangelo's David. Worse, actually, because from the photographs I've seen, I'm not the least bit impressed with Davey-boy. Draco, on the other hand… She felt her mouth begin to water, and swallowed quickly. "Tell me exactly where you've dragged me, and I won't have to, Malfoy," she said.

His hands went to the small of her back. Gently, he pushed her to a sitting position. "I don't think I have to tell you that, Weasley," he said quietly, and she realized that he certainly didn't.

They were sitting on the couch in the living room of the cottage in Lyme Regis.

A series of intensely vivid images from the year before ran through Ginny's head. Draco lying on the couch, peacefully asleep. Herself, sneaking up to him in the middle of the night after a number of frustrating dreams about sex. Now she was reaching out and shamelessly molesting him in order to satisfy her own curiousity about the size of his personal Quidditch set. And she never really had figured it out, not completely, but she had a pretty good idea of the dimensions after a brief exploration. Said pretty good idea had then led her to bring herself to a delicious orgasm with one hand while stroking the still-sleeping Draco with the other. Actually, that orgasm had spoiled her. Every single one since that night hadn't seemed even halfway decent by comparison.

Ginny closed her eyes, sincerely hoping that she wasn't actually blushing. She desperately wanted to drop her head back in Draco's lap, Now, of course, she had been reminded of what lay under that lap, which did not improve her composure. But she couldn't do it. There was so much that she still didn't understand, and now that she had found Draco, now that she had warned him, her desire to understand everything had returned full force.

"Where were you going to bring me, Malfoy?" she asked.

"Your art studio, in London," he said.

Ginny thought about that. "I guess that idea does make sense. I doubt either Harry or Hermione would've thought of staking it out."

He nodded. "It's magically shielded as well, because it's Gringotts property."

"How did you know that?" asked Ginny, startled.

"The Malfoys have always had considerable holdings in Gringotts; our family vault is the oldest, in fact. Most of us haven't had much interest in the workings of the bank, but then…" Draco cocked an eyebrow at her. "I've been a bit more financially involved than most for several years now, let's just say. And I make a point of keeping myself informed about highly questionable loans. Crumbleygrotts contacted me regarding your application last year. The only reason the goblins even considered you for it was because of your connection with Potter."

That muscle in his jaw was jumping again, Ginny noticed. Tick, tick, tick. There it went.

"One of them actually proposed the idea of requiring you to sign a stipulation that you'd work off your debt as a companion at the Crystal Palace if you couldn't pay the loan," he went on, in an ominously calm voice.

"A companion at the Crystal Palace? Oh. Uh…" Ginny knew that she was blushing bright red now. She couldn't honestly say that she had the clearest idea in the world about the exact details of what went on at the oldest and most infamous whorehouse in the wizarding world, but because she'd grown up with six older brothers, she did indeed have some ideas.

"Well, after I came perilously close to wringing the neck of every goblin in the establishment, they approved the loan for the kiln and the studio," said Draco.

"Oh. So it was you. Uh…thanks," said Ginny rather awkwardly. "But why did you care?"

Draco shrugged. "I believe in supporting the arts."

"I never figured you for the type," said Ginny.

"You'd be surprised by all the hidden sides of me."

I'll just bet I would, thought Ginny. But—wait a minute! She scowled at him. "I'll have you know that I've figured out you've been trying to change the subject, Malfoy, and it isn't going to work. So the art studio is shielded. Lovely. Can you shield the cottage, too? Do you have that power, because it's Malfoy property?"

He gave a short, sharp laugh. "From Aurors? Yes."

'But then we'd be safe, wouldn't we? There's nothing else to worry about, is there?"

"There are plenty of things to worry about in this world," said Draco. He got up from the couch, pushing her away, and started to walk restlessly across the room, glancing out the window. "It looks like it's going to rain." She followed him.

"You're trying to change the subject again, Malfoy. Who else would you need to shield us from? Are we really in danger?"

He sighed. "Weasley, I said that I would keep you safe, and I mean it. That's all you need to know."

"I don't understand."

"Weasley, not everything is meant to be understood." He was starting to sound exasperated. "I know that your entire family appears to be cursed with an insane thirst for knowledge. Perhaps it originally evolved when the first Weasley grew legs and crawled out of slimy seas; who knows, but you're simply going to have to go against all of your natural instincts and suppress it."

"Oh, no I don't!" said Ginny. "If you really think—"

"Shhh!" said Draco suddenly.

"Don't you tell me to shut up, Draco Malfoy. You've dragged me here and I don't even know why, and the mysteries are piling up every minute, and now you don't want to answer even the simplest question—" began Ginny.

He actually clapped a hand over her mouth. Then he tensely scanned the landscape outside the window. Ginny did too, trying to see what was upsetting him so much, but all she could tell was that it had grown very dark and the wind was scudding across the landscape and setting the grasses waving. The rain had started coming down hard now, which made it even harder to see, but when she squinted, she almost thought… yes! A shadowy figure moved behind a bush.

Draco let her go and walked quickly across the room, taking off his cloak and hanging it on a hook on the door. Then he rummaged in a closet, emerging with a longer, rainproof coat. Ginny pulled on his arm.

"What are you doing, Draco?"

"Going out."

"Why?"

"Because I have to."

"But to do what?"

He whirled on her. "Fuck, Weasley, will you drop it? Drop everything. Drop all of your questions. I don't care if you don't want to. You don't have any choice. Here's our deal. You give up this insane need to know everything, and I protect you from doom. How's that?"

She stood her ground. "Why did you bring me here, Malfoy? Why not my art studio? What are we doing here? What are you doing here?"

His hands clenched into fists."I. Am going. Out," he said. "You. Stay here. Don't go outside, no matter what you do. Don't you dare. And don't let anyone in but me. I don't know when I'll be back, but you make damn sure that you know it's me before you let me in. You shouldn't be able to open the door, any of the windows, the storm cellar, the attic, or the tiles in the roof to anyone but me, but I am putting every Locking spell I know on everything anyway."

Ginny bit her lip. "I saw someone outside that window, Draco. I know that you saw them too. And… "She had a sudden flash of inspiration. "That was the same person who was following us at Gringotts, wasn't it?"

He looked at her, and she was suddenly reminded of the summer when she was eleven years old and had pestered Fred and George just a little too long about why they kept trying to find out about activities at the mysterious Crystal Palace in Hogsmeade, and they'd used a Miniaturization spell to turn her six inches high and then locked her in her old toy dollhouse. She'd begged and pleaded for hours before they finally let her out. But the twins had never looked at her in that frightening way. She saw her eager, open eyes reflected in Draco Malfoy's icy gray ones, and her legs felt like they were going to give out under her.

"Didn't you hear what I said to Astoria Greengrass this afternoon?" he asked her in frozen, measured tones. "I don't explain myself, Weasley. Not to anyone."

"I'm not Astoria Greengrass," she said.

"No… no, you're not. Let it go, Weasley," said Draco. "Accept that you won't understand what's going on here. I won't let anything happen to you. I have obligations towards you now, because I've involved you in this disaster, and I will not allow you to be harmed. You have my word, my word as a Malfoy—" He stopped, and swallowed. "You have my promise. Trust me. Trust me."

"But—"

He opened the door and left her before she could get out another word, disappearing into the swirling wind and the rain.

As soon as she was sure he was well away from the cottage, she tried the door. He really had used every Locking spell she'd ever heard of, as well as several that she thought would have shocked even her brother Bill. He was also right about the windows. Ginny sat back on the couch with a sigh, feeling very defeated. She made tea and then let it grow cold, staring at the door. Maybe there were one or two Counterspells she hadn't yet tried. She heaved herself up.

She tapped her wand against the doorknob in different patterns, working her way further and further out, and finally she brushed against Draco's cloak, hung on the back of the door. She ran her hand along its folds. Feeling guilty, she buried her face in it, sniffing the chocolatey scent. It just seemed to be all through the cloth… She stood on her tiptoes and took it off the hook, and wrapped it round her, and felt the smell of Draco envelop her as the cloth puddled on the floor at her feet. It was much too big for her, of course. Then, sighing again, she hung it back up.

Something fell out of one of the pockets.

Ginny leaned down to pick it up. It was very small and perfectly square, about the size and shape of a die. She peered very close. She was just a little short-sighted, and she hadn't remembered to renew her Myopia charms, so she had no trouble reading the microscopic writing.

Lyme Regis.

It was one of the crates she'd seen in the entrance hall of Draco's flat. It had been Miniaturized.

This didn't belong to Blaise Zabini at all, thought Ginny. He lied to me.

Maybe he hadn't exactly lied to her about everything else, but he hadn't told her the truth, either. He wouldn't tell her why they were at this cottage rather than her art studio in London, or who had been chasing them at Gringotts, or who she had just seen outside, or whether or not the two were really the same person. He wouldn't tell her why he had just gone out in the wind and the rain without her. She'd risked so much for Draco Malfoy, and she wasn't even sure why, and he wouldn't explain anything at all to her. So naturally, she was justified in setting the tiny crate on the table, tapping it with her wand, and whispering, "Gargantua."

Ginny didn't expect it to open it easily. She didn't even expect the first few spells to work. She had to admit that she wasn't even all that surprised when she was finally reduced to rummaging around in the kitchen drawers for a large metal spatula. After half an hour of unsuccessfully trying to pry the wooden top off, however, she was starting to get the uncomfortable sinking feeling in her stomach that she always had whenever she'd known deep down all along that one of her attempts at getting illegal information probably wasn't going to work, and it didn't. She flopped back in the kitchen chair. The metal lock on the chest stirred.

"I will not open by force or art," it said in a grating voice.

"Nice of you to tell me that now," grumbled Ginny. She was in no mood for dealing with snarky magical objects at the moment. "Would you mind telling me exactly how you do open?"

"A lock for a lock, if the mistress of the lock has arrived," said the lock.

Well. That was less than helpful. "Care to clarify?" she asked, bending over it. She peered closer. It had a dark, rusty face. "I mean, that doesn't really make a lot of sense- oww!"

It had snatched at her hair and sucked a piece inside. Ginny massaged her aching head and glared at the lock. Maybe I really should just take a hammer to that entire crate. I'll bet there's one in that shed out back. Oh, shite—I can't even get out there. What am I supposed to do if this insane lock decides it's going to make the crate catch fire next, or something, and the cottage starts burning down? I'll bet Draco didn't think of that. Of course, he didn't exactly think of my stealing the crate out of his pocket, either. No! I didn't steal it! It's not my fault if it just happened to fall on the floor, and then-

Click.

The lock had swung open. The top of the crate fell back.

A lock of hair, realized Ginny. That's what opened the crate.

The cuckoo clock whirred just before striking the hour. "Ten o'clock, I'm about to chime. Draco Malfoy may be back at any time. I may not know why, I may not know how, but Ginny, you'd better get your spying done now."

"It is not spying!" muttered Ginny, but she didn't wait to be told again. She reached into the crate with both hands as fast as she could, because even though she was very, very sure that she had every right in the world to find out what was in it, she had a definite feeling that she didn't really want to find out what would happen if Draco returned unexpectedly and found her pawing through the contents.


	14. Of Crates and Naughty Companions

+++  
Ginny knew that it couldn't have possibly been even twelve hours since had first seen the mysterious crates sitting on the floor of Draco Malfoy's front hall, but her imagination had already run riot over their contents in several different directions. Decapitated house-elf heads seemed a distinct possibility, as did extra Horcruxes that Voldemort had stashed at Malfoy manor in case of an emergency, or cursed diamond necklaces that she just might have to try on anyway. In some squirmy, unacknowledged corner of her mind, she linked the spell with magical submission to the Malfoy heir. Completely _uncontrollable_ magical submission, of course. There wouldn't be a single thing she could do about it. She just couldn't stop picturing Draco coming up behind her suddenly and wrapping the jewels around her neck, pulling the strands so tight that she was almost breathless. "Surrender, Weasley," he would whisper, until she melted back into his arms. He would unbutton her blouse from behind, draping the necklace over her naked chest, letting the loops fall over her bare breasts, cupping them in his hands. Strangely enough, the gloves that would have protected her from the effects of the curse lay on the floor where she'd thrown them before opening the crate. Draco rolled the cold diamonds over her nipples, they hardened into raspberry pebbles between his fingers, his hands moved downwards, and then—

Ginny scowled, thoroughly disgusted with herself at the strength of her own fantasies. Anger and excitement and arousal pumped through her veins until she couldn't tell which was which anymore, but one thing she could be sure of was that she was royally brassed off at Draco for not telling her anything about what the hell was going on. She hated the feeling, and she hated the fact that she still couldn't get the image of him seizing her hips as he roughly bent her over the kitchen table dressed in nothing but diamonds out of her damn _mind!_ Her curiousity about this crate was now going to be satisfied, and that really should be satisfaction enough for the moment. Her fingers grabbed at some round, knobbly rocklike little things. She pulled them up from the crate. Maybe they actually _were_… well… diamonds in the rough. _Except I wouldn't have thought that even Malfoys would have diamonds that size lying around the house._

They hadn't. The things were fluted spiral fossils, blue-gray in color, and they looked like seashells. _Echinoderms… that's what they're called._ She'd seen pictures of them, and she'd planned to see the real thing last year at a museum last year in Lyme during a short educational break from all the hot sex when she came here to meet Michael, but of course it hadn't worked out that way. And when she'd slept in this cottage with Draco Malfoy (or rather, _not_ slept, for the most part, her unruly mind reminded her), they'd been the last things on her mind. Ginny let them fall back into the crate. Her disappointment was acute. But she'd hardly even started, she told herself. There could still be so much more in there.

Ginny rummaged through layers of paper wrapping and emerged with something that looked like a dried-up chain of daisies made into a circlet. _I used to make daisy chains like that during the summers when I was very little, back at the Burrow,_ she thought._I'd put one on my head and call it a crown, and say I was the Queen of the Field. But why would it be worth hiding?_ She found a square little box, which seemed very promising for about fifteen seconds. But when she opened it, she found nothing but a very thin coiled length of blond hair, almost as pale as Draco's own but not quite, tied neatly with a tiny green ribbon. She tapped it with her wand and tried every Revealing spell she could think of, but it stubbornly remained hair. She sank back into the chair.

"Malfoy just threw a bunch of completely random crap in here at some point," she said aloud. "Nothing more." She tapped her chin with a finger. "But then why did he go to all that trouble trying to hide it at Gringotts? That's the question… unless he was really going there for something else. To get a big stack of Galleons out, maybe?" Not that the second possibility really solved the mystery, either, because she found it hard to believe that Draco Malfoy didn't have a reasonable supply of cash to support his playboy lifestyle at any given time. So why would he need to suddenly get his hands on so much more? No, there had to be something special about this crate, something she just hadn't found yet. Something hidden. She studied it, picked it up, put it down. It seemed much heavier than it should. Maybe there was a false bottom…

Ginny tipped it from side to side, not expecting much, and heard a sliding, bumping noise. She pawed into the crate again, and her fingernails hooked on the edge of something. It felt as if several flat books were fitted neatly into the bottom.

_Aha! Oh, I knew it. This has to be something good. I wonder what? __**The Secret Sexual Exploits of Draco Malfoy**__? Of course, why he would have needed to hide that away, I don't know. Unless it would twist Astoria Greengrass's knickers around too thoroughly for her to endure, and she insisted on every copy being destroyed._ Her heart sank at that thought. _But he told her the wedding was off. He said he wouldn't marry her. I was right there; I heard it. And—oh, it isn't as if he's exactly asked me to marry him, either!_ Ginny scowled, disgusted with herself all over again.

The sight of the book did not improve her mood. _Nature's Nobility: The Extended Edition._ An unbearably snooty-looking trio of witches in Regency dress looked down their noses at her from the authors' photograph.

"I suppose we must allow her to read our book," said the first, who was listed as Princesse de Lieven. "After all, she is a pureblood, although decidedly of a lower class sort."

"I suppose we must. And yet, what an unbearable tragedy to be forced to lower one's standards in such fashion," said the second, who was apparently—Ginny peered at the overly fussy typeface—Lady Jersey.

"Let us welcome her," said Lady Sefton with an agreeable smile. "After all, I have heard that Miss Weasley can behave charmingly, when she chooses."

"Humph," said Princesse de Lieven."I suppose that next you will say she would make an acceptable candidate for attendance at the Annual Pureblood Regency Ball."

"Indeed she might," said Lady Sefton, "with the right escort. Such as the dashing young Malfoy, for instance."  
"All the gods together forbid. Oh, I shall faint. Where are my smelling salts?" wept Lady Jersey.

"Sarah, you are, without a doubt, the most appalling drama queen it has been my misfortune to encounter," Princesse de Lieven said coldly.

"Dariya, that is less than kind," twittered Lady Sefton.

"Kindness is not a quality necessary for advancement in society," said the princess.

Ginny held up a hand. "Wait a minute. Just wait. I know who you are. You're the patronesses of the Pureblood Regency Ball. You decide who's allowed in every year, and who isn't."

The princess inclined her head just slightly. "You are correct, Miss Weasley. And I may tell you that in ten thousand years, neither we nor our ancestresses have ever once blackballed a Malfoy, no matter who his partner might be. You would be welcome with the Malfoy heir as your escort."

"Yes, yes," said Ginny impatiently. "I think it's vile, and I wouldn't be caught dead, alive, or as an Inferi there, so it's not exactly the point. What I'd like to know is, what's your book doing _here_? Why are you in this crate?"

"That is something I cannot tell you, Miss Weasley," said the princess. "We are only the authors, after all."

"Okay…" Ginny chewed on a fingernail.

"What a dreadfully unattractive habit," said Lady Jersey.

"I'm not talking to you," said Ginny. _People in wizarding photographs have to tell the truth. That's what photograph-Draco said… so these snotty witches can't lie to me, even if they want to._ "When were you put in here?" she asked the princess.

"Draco Malfoy placed us in this crate when he was eighteen years old, as I recall. I believe that it was in winter," said the princess.

"Right in the middle of the time when he'd disappeared for those six months, after the war," muttered Ginny. "But where were you then? Where was _he_?"

"I really cannot say. Our view included nothing more than a bookshelf."

_Shite. I should've known it wasn't going to be that easy._ "Don't you know anything else?" asked Ginny.

"No," said the princess. "However, you may read our book, if you like."

"And we'd love to see you at the Pureblood Regency Ball," Lady Sefton said hopefully as Ginny slammed the cover shut on her.

She started riffling rapidly through the book and shaking the pages out, hoping for a handwritten note next to the text, a folded letter, a clue, _something._ Could the book itself be the clue? Ginny grimaced. She had all-too-vivid memories of the time she'd been stuck indoors for a week at Twelve Grimmauld Place over the summer between her third and fourth year because she'd had magical flu. She'd been so incredibly bored that she'd actually read _Nature's Nobility_, and she was convinced to this day that it had made her fever worse. Of course, that hadn't been the extended edition… She flipped through the appendices, but they seemed to consist of nothing except extra wizarding family trees that traced nineteenth-cousin relationships, apparently all the way back to the Precambrian extinction. While, it was certainly _interesting_ to finally know for sure that Loki was the original Malfoy ancestor, it was rather difficult to see why Draco would have even considered it worth his while to bother to hide this open secret in the wizarding community. Especially, Ginny thought sourly, because she'd heard that the rumor only bolstered his playboy reputation, and led a lot of girls to try to find out for themselves if there was actually a link between said ancestry and possibly superhuman skills in certain areas.

_Oh, wait…_ Appendix X seemed to be a bit different. It was… _oh_. Ginny blushed. _A Natural History of the Crystal Palace, a Refined Establishment of Pleasure for the Amusement of Purebloods._ If any of her brothers had ever caught her just reading the heading, she thought, that would have been enough for them to drag her off to a Muggle nunnery and never let her out again. She flipped past it quickly, barely noting a year-by-year history, an outline of services provided, a number of photographs and etchings, and a Registry Index of companions.

Well, that was it, the end of the book. Ginny let it fall onto the table and dug around in the bottom of the crate again. She brought out something flat and hard. _A picture frame._ Set in it was a photograph of couples dancing in a large room, whirling round and round in a waltz. Every tiny figure was elegantly dressed; the men in long cutaway coats and elaborately folded and tied cravats, the women in long lace and muslin gowns with empire waists that began just under their breasts, the necklines ridiculously low (_if they sneeze, they're going to pop right out,_ thought Ginny), their hair an elaborate cascade of curls. She knew before she even looked down at the caption at the bottom of the photograph where they all must be. _Pureblood Regency Ball._ And there, moving round the very back of the group—she looked very hard—was Draco Malfoy. She could barely see his face; when she tried a Magnification spell, even that didn't help much. All she could really tell was that it was definitely Draco, not Lucius; otherwise, she wasn't sure if she would have known, because the photograph was undated.

Ginny stared and stared at the woman in his arms, desperately trying to figure out who she was. But she was even further away from the camera, and it was impossible to tell much of anything about her. She was tall, with fair hair, not quite as blonde as Draco's, and Ginny thought that her eyes were blue. _Astoria Greengrass?_ If this photograph had been taken the year before, that would make sense; Ginny knew that Draco had taken Astoria then, she'd read about it in the _Daily Prophet._ And yet somehow the woman didn't _quite_ look like Astoria; similar, but not exactly the same. Ginny wasn't even sure exactly why she had that impression, but once she did, she couldn't get rid of it. Whoever she was, she looked several years older, for one thing. _An older sister? But Astoria only has one sister, and that's Daphne. And Daphne's only a year or two older. This woman's young, but I would swear that she looks older than either Daphne or Astoria._ Draco and the mystery woman went round again, and Ginny's eyes narrowed. Whoever she was, she was several years older than Draco in this photograph, too, and Draco was definitely two years older than Astoria. _I really think she has to be at least twenty-six or so. But how old is he? When __**was**__ this?_

Ginny went rapidly back to the book and scanned the index. "Minimum age, minimum age…" she muttered. "Here it is. A male pureblood must be at least eighteen years old to attend the Pureblood Regency Ball." She looked back at the photograph again.

"Are you eighteen years old?" she asked the dancing Draco.

He ignored her.

She leaned closer and talked louder. "Was this the ball you went to during that six months when you disappeared, after the war?"

He threw his head back and laughed at something that his blonde partner had said.

"Hello!" yelled Ginny. "Malfoy! You have to answer me."

He looked up briefly, shrugged, and then put his hand to his ear, shaking his head.

"Oh, you can too hear me! You'd better tell me what I want to know, or I'll—"

But he was holding a glass of champagne to the blonde woman's lips now, smiling tenderly. She drank. He leaned forward to kiss her. Ginny's eyes widened in fury.

_I am going to pick up that picture frame and swing it against the wall and-_

Then she stopped. There was a little note tucked into one corner, so small that she'd overlooked it before. It was handwritten in Draco's elegant, slanting script.

_Draco & Marie. Pureblood Regency Ball. Mine, mine, mine. Always._

Ginny's fingers felt something scratchy, and she turned the frame over. A few folded papers were tucked into the back. She unfolded them, and saw that they were sketches, each one signed _D. Malfoy_. They weren't accomplished on a professional level; as a professional artist, she could tell that, but she was surprised at how good they were for an amateur, showing a real knowledge of anatomy and physiology. That was rather a necessary skill, she thought, seeing as how all three of them were nudes. They were all sketches of the same nude woman, lying in a bed. She looked familiar. _Very_ familiar. _This is the woman I saw dancing in the photograph,_ thought Ginny. _This is Marie._ Her face was turned almost entirely away from the camera, but Ginny could see the long blonde hair spilled over her shoulders and breasts, rising and falling with each even breath.

"Who are you?" Ginny demanded. "Or who _were_ you? What did you mean to Draco? Answer me!"

But the woman kept breathing deeply and evenly. She was asleep, Ginny realized. She stuffed them back into the frame.

It didn't mean a thing, Ginny kept telling herself over and over again. So Draco had once felt something for this woman named Marie, so he'd written that she was his, so he'd thought that she always would be, so he'd sketched her carefully, tenderly, and skillfully while she slept. So what? It wasn't as if she herself had thought he was a _virgin_, for Merlin's sake. _But there's a world of difference between sex and love,_ she thought, _and oh, but that seemed a lot like love. And the way he looked at Marie, the way he was about to kiss her… it hurt to watch… he didn't act like that with Astoria at all. I'd bet just about anything that he never drew Astoria. If she'd seen all this, I suppose she'd have a right to get upset. But me… me… _Ginny bit her lip. When you got right down to it, what made her think she had any right to get angry? What business did _she_ have feeling hurt over Draco having loved someone else? (_the someone else whose name he still murmured in his sleep when I touched him,_ her heart faintly whispered, as her mind sternly ordered it to shut up).

Ginny ran a hand over her face. She was sorely tempted to take the stupid crate and throw it out the window. Or maybe she should go outside and just start walking; surely a car would come along and she could hitchhike into Lyme Regis, and then find an Apparition point and get back to her flat, which suddenly seemed so safe and cozy. Everything suddenly seemed wrong and sharp-edged and uncomfortable, and the rain beating down on the roof made her feel miserable and chilled to the bone, and for a moment, she didn't think she ever really wanted to see Draco Malfoy again. _Marie can have him, whoever she is,_ she thought drearily.

She leaned over to put the framed picture back in the crate. It tapped against something else flat and hard. _Probably a closeup photograph of Draco and Marie making love. And that photo-Draco will explain that Marie was the one true love of his life, and he could never love anybody else, and then they'll go back to having amazing sex. So I'll finally get to see Draco completely naked, and it'll be just when I want to strangle him to death with my bare hands-_

Ginny yanked the second picture out. _Might as well get this over with._ At the last second, her courage failed her a bit, and she turned it slightly away from her so that she could see into it but nobody in it could see her. Then she peeked cautiously.

Draco Malfoy sat stiffly in formal dress robes in front of a white and gold background decorated with _fleur de lis_, not a sleek blond hair out of place, looking arrogantly bored. As Ginny watched, he stifled a yawn. _Okay, I'm going to do a better job of figuring out when the fuck this picture was taken than I did with the last one,_ she thought grimly. _Time to start piecing together the clues._

She scanned the photo, still keeping her face tilted well away from Draco's line of sight. It was a closeup. She had a decent view of his face, although it wasn't as good as she would have liked because of the angle. He looked young, but he was clearly at least in his mid-teens; there must be some way to place exactly how old he'd been. _But if he was anywhere around fifteen years old, the strands on the top of his hair were longer, at the very end of his fifth year. Yes, just before he left for the summer holidays. And in this picture, they're shorter. . Not that I ever spent that much time in thinking about Draco Malfoy's hair, of course…_ She studied his trimmed hair critically. _Did he maybe go home and get it cut? But I can't be sure. The angle's so bad because I have to keep it tilted away from me so much. This could be anytime after about his fifth year, really._

There was no date on the picture, and she certainly didn't want to actually ask; she wanted more ammunition before she even thought about facing yet another Draco. She looked at the dress robes, and her heart sank. They weren't Hogwarts robes, she was sure about that. What if this picture was from that mysterious vanished six months, too? What if Marie was about to launch herself on him any second and start ripping the robes off? What if—

Draco gave a theatrical sigh.

"Loki, but this stone archway's getting bloody _boring_ to stare at," he muttered. 'Think I'll go visit Manet's _Olympia_ again, see if she'll let me feel her up a bit. She was more than happy about it last time—"

Ginny decided that somehow, this particular Draco just didn't _sound_ as if he'd found eternal, lasting love with the mysterious Marie or anyone else. "Hold that thought," she said to him.

He blinked, looking very startled. "Who's that?"

"Never mind who I am," said Ginny.

"How do you know who _I_ am?"

"Never mind that either! You're not the one who gets to ask the questions around here. I'm going to ask you about some things, and I know for a fact that you've got to tell me anything I want to know, Malfoy."

He gave her his most superior look, the one she remembered so well from school and had privately dubbed the _ten-thousand-years-of-pureblood-breeding-have-culminated-in-my-flawless-arse_ look. (_Not that that isn't accurate, of course,_ she'd always added, if she were to be honest with herself.)

"No, I don't," he said.

"What are you talking about? You're a wizarding photograph! Of course you do."

"I most certainly don't. I was created for a very specific purpose. The rules don't apply to me. I'm not obliged to tell you anything." Draco examined his flawless fingernails. "Unless, of course, you're the one person whom I was created for, and I think you'd already have made it clear if you were."

Ginny's fists clenched. _Ooh…_ Well, there was really only one thing to do. She muttered the same Illusion charm she'd used earlier to hide from Harry and the Aurors, altering it slightly as she tapped her wand over her face. Then she turned the frame to her so she could examine this Draco fully.

She gritted her teeth, because she didn't really learn anything new; he still looked young and arrogant and flawless, a beautiful pureblood boy in priceless robes dressed up for some special occasion or other, she might as well have spared herself the trouble. _Good gods, but he looks pale. I wonder if it's just the lighting…_

But it wasn't. This Draco had _turned_ pale; all the blood had drained out of his face, and his mouth had dropped open. '_Oh,_" he said faintly. "Oh… I'm sorry… I didn't know… I should have guessed… that was a test, wasn't it?"

"A test?" Ginny said blankly.

"I mean…" He looked at her uncertainly. "It _is_ you, right?"

"Of course," Ginny said, as haughtily as she could. 'And you're right. It was a test."

"I knew it, I just knew it," Draco muttered. "I can do better, I'm sure I can. You'll give me another chance, won't you? It was an honest mistake!" He pressed his hands together.

He was babbling, Ginny realized incredulously. Draco Malfoy was actually… _incoherent._ And now that he was turned completely towards her, she could see that his expensive robes had the Malfoy crest on them, which was why they weren't Hogwarts robes. _This boy is not eighteen,_ she thought uncomfortably. _Oh, gods, just how young is he?_

"I suppose so," she said. "But only if you answer my questions, Malfoy. You do realize now that you don't have any choice."

"Yes, yes. Now that I know who you are."

_I'm glad one of us knows!_ thought Ginny. "Will you tell me anything I ask?"

"Well…" Draco hesitated, looking profoundly uncomfortable. "I have to, don't I? What I mean to say is, I don't really have any choice."

It was all that Ginny could do to hide a rather malicious smile. _Malfoy, I really think I could get used to you like this. Although it would help a lot if I had the faintest idea of what the fuck is going on…_ "All right," she said, thinking furiously. "How old are you?"

"Don't you know?"

"Am I going to have to remind you again about the _test_?" she asked sternly. "Do you want to get a passing grade, Malfoy?"

He gulped visibly. "Ah, right then. I've just turned sixteen."

She breathed a silent sigh of relief. _Over the wizarding age of consent, thank all the gods. I suppose I can go back to noticing how sinfully gorgeous he is again._

"This is my birthday portrait, you know," said Draco. "Of course you do, but it's all part of the test, isn't it?"

"All part of the test," said Ginny, past a sudden tightness in her throat. _Draco's sixteenth birthday. _It was right after the end of his fifth year, before that summer when he'd taken his father's place at Voldemort's side and come back to Hogwarts as a Death Eater with the Dark Mark on his arm. Before he'd let Death Eaters into the school, before he'd refused to kill Dumbledore. Before she'd almost kissed him… before he'd come to her on the night of the last battle and she'd almost let him touch her, almost let herself be drawn into something with him that she could never, ever have escaped from again… But this Draco didn't know about any of that. There was something about him that was still innocent. She could see it.

"And what is the purpose of this special portrait?" Ginny asked in the most pedantic tones she could manage, modeled on Hermione at her worst.

"Uh—to provide my companion with an image of me, so she'll know what to expect," said Draco. "So she has a chance to get to know me a bit before I meet her next month. Of course, we can't really _do_ anything yet, can we?" He looked at Ginny wistfully.

_What?_ "How did you know I was your companion?" blurted Ginny.

"Well, uh… because I don't think anybody else could have got this portrait of me for one thing," said Draco. "And when I see you, I can't tell who you are. Just that you're beautiful. I know that when companions meet boys through the portraits, they wear Illusion spells."

_Shite! This is just getting worse and worse._ "Am I your companion?" asked Ginny, feeling as if she were wading deeper and deeper into confusion at every moment.

He looked at her strangely. "Uh… I mean, of course you are. You can't be anyone else."

"What _is_ a companion?" asked Ginny desperately.

"Is this still part of the test?"

She took a deep breath. "Yes. You've made it through very well, Malfoy. The last bit was the hardest; it was designed to throw you off balance, but you passed with flying colours."

He relaxed. "Oh, thank all the gods," he said fervently. "Are there ever any boys who _don't_ pass?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so," said Ginny.

"What happens to them?"

"You don't want to know." _Especially because I don't have any idea what to tell you!_

"They—they can't go through the ceremony, can they?"

"No, they can't," agreed Ginny.

Draco looked horrified. "That's dreadful. That's the worst thing I've ever heard. I think I'd die. No, I think I'd _rather_ die than not go through with the ceremony."

"Mm. Well, you don't have to worry about that now, Malfoy." _Oh, this doesn't sound good. This isn't…this couldn't be… yes, it could. Does this ceremony have something to do with Voldemort? Did Draco go through with it?_ Her heart ached for this painfully young Draco, so excited about a ceremony that probably involved Death Eaters and the Dark Arts and the gods only knew what else. A truly awful thought struck her. _He thinks I was his companion, but obviously I wasn't. What if his real companion actually helped him through the ceremony where he got the Dark Mark? No, wait, that can't have been it. That happened the day before the autumn term happened his sixth year; Ron and Hermione both saw it, they told Harry about it. Then what the fuck was this ceremony? I don't think I can get away with asking him about it and pretending it's part of the test…_

"No, I don't have to worry about that," said Draco with a sigh. "Unless…" He looked troubled.

"What is it, Malfoy?" she asked.

"Nothing, it's nothing."

"Remember, you've got to tell me whatever I ask."

He nodded. "Of course. I will."

A secret little thrill went through her. There was just something about having this photo-Draco actually _obeying_ her; it was such a complete turnabout from anything the real Draco was ever going to do in a million years… A sudden, shameful image flashed through her mind of the sixteen-year-old Draco in a slaveboy outfit. She firmly suppressed it. _He's only a photograph! And I need to concentrate of getting information out of him, because of the slight problem of still not knowing what the fuck is going on here._

"I'm afraid that perhaps I won't be able to pick you out when the time comes," confessed Draco. "You'll know who I am, of course, because you've seen me. But I won't have seen you—not so that I'd be able to recognize you. All I can really tell is that you're beautiful. So beautiful. Your face, your body—all of you." He looked at her longingly, and Ginny felt her own breath catch at the raw desire on his sixteen-year-old face.

She struggled to think logically. Obviously, Draco knew that the two of them were scheduled to meet each other in some setting in about one month. She'd be in a group, and he was supposed to pick her out of all the others. He chose her; she didn't choose him, but on the other hand, she was clearly expected to play a dominant role, the teacher to his student. _Am I a Death Eater professor, or something? Trust Draco Malfoy to throw in the sex part anyway. _

"Maybe we could use a code word," she suggested.

He gave her a sad smile. "I suppose that was a trick question. You know we couldn't do that. I'm not allowed to pass on any information to real-Draco. No. This portrait is for you, my companion, only for you. But I can dream about what you're like, can't I? Yes?" He moved closer to the frame, pressing his hands up to it. "Could you get closer as well?"

"All right," Ginny said cautiously.

"Ah," he sighed. "You really are so pretty, companion. I can at least pretend I'm touching you, can't I?"

"Um…" _Even considering the fact that we're talking about Draco Malfoy, this is a very odd way to behave with his Death Eater teacher._ Still, Ginny moved closer. Draco ran a hand along the line of her neck and chest.

"Companion?" he asked pleadingly.

"Yes?"

"Could you take off your blouse? I'd really like to see your breasts. And perhaps you could play with them a bit. Sort of take them in your hands, and-"

"That's it!" said Ginny. "That's it. I finally get it."

Draco looked rather apprehensive. "I suppose that isn't allowed. Perhaps I'd better go and take another cold bath in the _Scene of the Moorish Harem Lady_ painting—oh, shite, that'll only make it worse! This doesn't mean you'll cancel the ceremony after all, does it?"

"Malfoy, could you just hold on a moment?" Ginny ignored his increasingly frantic pleas and turned to flip through the _Nature's Nobility_ Appendix X. "Companion, companion," she muttered. "Companion _and_ ceremony…" And there it was.

_A companion for the pureblood initiation ceremony of a sixteen-year-old boy must be chosen with great care. Once the choice has been made, she (or he, depending upon the lad's gender preference), will receive a birthday portrait in order to acquaint herself with the boy in question. Exchange of information between photographed and real selves is both forbidden and impossible, although her appearance must still be disguised through an Illusion spell. However, the boy will still inevitably make the correct choice of companion from the group at the start of his initiation ceremony, because the companion herself has been chosen for compatibility with such care._

_Not this time,_ Ginny thought sadly. She read on.

_While the boy in question must obviously refrain from actual sexual congress until the initiation itself, his photographed self is allowed certain intimacies with his companion, to the extent, of course, that this is possible between a flesh-and-blood woman and a photograph-_

She slammed the book shut.

"Is everything all right?" the photograph-Draco asked anxiously. "Have I passed the tests?"

"Yes," said Ginny. "You've passed all the tests, Malfoy."

He let out his breath. "Draco. Please call me Draco. And, and I'll have my initiation ceremony? With you?"

She reached out a hand to the side of his smooth young face and came as close as she could to stroking it, feeling the glass. "You'll have it with me… Draco. Soon."

"Ah." He closed his eyes. "And you'll teach me everything, won't you? We'll have a whole month!"

"We'll do everything you want, Draco," said Ginny.

He looked up at her with all the heartbreaking beauty of his sixteen-year-old face. "I can't wait," he said, and it was all that Ginny could do to keep from crying.

She never knew what she would have said next, but she didn't have to say anything, because she suddenly heard a fumbling noise at the door. _Oh, gods, it's the real Draco! He's come back! Shite, shite!_ She started throwing things back into the crate because she didn't dare to try to shrink the whole thing and put it in her pocket, as much as she would have liked to, but she couldn't bear to leave the sixteen-year-old photographed-Draco behind, she just couldn't. So she shrank that, and then she pulled the other photograph out and shrank it too, and in the confusion there might have been a book or even two that got shrunk along with the others so she stuffed them all into her purse and then shrank the crate and threw it back into the pocket of Draco's cloak. Then she leaned against the back of the door, heart hammering, trying desperately to forget the teenaged Draco's last words to her.

_I can't wait. I can't wait. I can't…companion, I can't…_

The doorknob clattered, screeched, and blew half off, green sparks flying from it. Ginny shrieked and scampered back.

"Let me in," said a surly voice outside the door.

"Who is it?"

"Draco Malfoy, who do you fucking think it is?"

"How do I know it's you?"

"If you don't let me in, you'll know it's me because I'll break the damn door down! I'm soaking wet and freezing cold. Open the fucking door, Weasley."

_I think I liked you better when you were sixteen years old, Malfoy._ Ginny tapped the remnants of the doorknob with her wand, and the Locking spells shimmered and dissolved into mist. Draco stumbled in and half-fell against her. _Oh._ He really was soaking wet, Ginny thought guiltily. His hair was plastered to his head, and rivulets of rain were running down his face. When he tried to get his rain cloak off, he couldn't quite seem to manage to do it. She helped him, and she saw that every inch of his clothing was soaked through.

"How long were you out in the rain?" she exclaimed.

"Long enough," he mumbled, flopping into a chair.

'You look terrible."

He opened one eye and glared at her. "Some would say that this isn't really the best moment for personal comments, Weasley." Then he slumped down.

Ginny bit her lip. He had never looked so drained and exhausted, she thought. "Malfoy, you really need to get out of those wet clothes."

"I'm all right." He kept staring at his linked hands on the table.

_Oh dear. Even that comment didn't get a single smirk out of him._ "I mean it," she insisted. "You'll get sick."

"Channeling Molly Weasley, are you?" he asked nastily.

"Well, it's true. At least get this shirt off. Come on." Ginny bent down to undo the buttons, and then sniffed at him. "You've been drinking!"

"Not enough," he said. "And if you had to do what I did, you'd be drinking, too. Look up in the cabinet. There's some Firewhiskey. Get it down."

"Well…" She looked at him uncertainly. "I suppose it would help you get warm again."

"Right," said Draco. "You'll have some as well, won't you, Weasley?" He gave her a bitter half-smile. "We'll drink together. And then if you really want to get my clothes off, you can."

Ginny shivered. There was something about the way he'd said those words, something about the way he'd said _everything_ since he came into the cottage, that was making her very, very uneasy.


	15. In Vino Veritas

A/N:

Thanks to all the reviewers!

"Well? That's what you want, isn't it, Weasley?" Draco asked, his voice flat and dark.

"I—I—" Ginny started to inch away from him without realizing that she had done it until she caught a glimpse of her own retreating back in the mirror over the fireplace behind them, in the living room. "I don't know, I don't know what you mean, Malfoy—"

"Don't you?" He gave her a strange, searching look.

"I just meant, if you don't get those wet clothes off, you'll catch a terrible cold," she said, She could hear how thick and clumsy her own words sounded. "That's all." Just what the hell is going on?

He pushed back his chair, and his hands came down on the table, the knuckles white against his pale skin. "Is it?"

It took her a few moments to realize that his demand had been a real question, and that he expected a reply. But she didn't know what sort of reply to give, so she just kept staring blankly back at him. The silence dragged on and on, broken only by the steady drumbeat of the rain on the roof of the cottage.

Then Draco made a quick, pantherlike movement towards her, and she stumbled back, almost falling. He somehow managed to get behind her before she could even scream, and he caught her arms. His hands felt icy cold. How does he move so fast? He pulled her up towards him from where she'd nearly tumbled onto the floor, his hands almost punishingly hard around her arms, and he scanned her face as if expecting to find something in it. Some sort of explanation, Ginny thought. She rather desperately wanted an explanation herself. She couldn't do anything but stare back at him, bewildered. Then she saw his smooth mask drop again, fitting his own face so perfectly that she couldn't really be sure she'd ever seen him without it, or even that it was a mask at all. Maybe she'd imagined everything.

"You're right, Weasley," he said lightly. "I clearly can't stay in these clothes forever. But if I didn't know better, I'd say you had designs on my virtue. You're a sight too eager to get them off me."

"Do you still want me to get that firewhiskey, Malfoy?" Ginny asked stiffly, pushing herself back. She could feel the damp, cold patches on her own jumper where she'd pressed herself against him. No, they weren't her own, were they? That light blue jumper was his; it smelled like him, it felt like him, the hat she'd been wearing before she lost it gods-only-knew-where was his.

"Look up in the cupboard above the stove," he said, sitting back down. "Although I think I've had about enough firewhiskey for one night, on second thought. There should be some bottles of wine up there. They haven't exactly been stored in the ideal spot, but they'll just have to do."

Ginny rummaged through the cupboard, feeling as if her mind had just been violently shaken and stirred and poured over crushed ice. What on earth had just happened? None of it made any sense, but it could do; it was as if she simply didn't know enough about what had come before anything he'd said or done. She'd entered halfway through a story. Draco knew the first half, and she didn't. That first half… it has to be what happened when he was out there, in the storm. But how can I possibly find out what it was? There were ways, of course, she thought uncomfortably, as her fingers brushed a wine bottle, and they were definitely coming to her mind at the moment. But only an utterly devious snake would ever use them, such as a Slytherin, or a Malfoy, or both.

"How about this one?" she asked, holding out a bottle.

"Chenin blanc?" said Draco. "Do you see any halibut around here?"

'Uh, no. What does that have to do with—"

"It's a crime against nature to serve chenin blanc with anything besides halibut."

"What about this?" Ginny held up a second bottle.

Draco grimaced. "Apparently, a few haute cuisine—or even bas cuisine- lessons are in order, Weasley. If we were eating grilled Angus filets, then Shiraz Viognier might be appropriate. Keep going. I know what I'm looking for."

"Then why don't you get up on this chair and look for yourself?" snapped Ginny.

Draco leaned back, linking his fingers behind his head. "It's so much easier to let you do it than to ring for a house-elf," he said.

"Ooh—" Ginny glared at him and went back to the cupboard. In her irritation, she didn't even notice that she'd temporarily forgotten all about trying to make sense of the mysteries swirling around Draco Malfoy.

"It's this, or it's nothing," she said through gritted teeth, holding out the last bottle.

" Gruner Veltliner. Very good. Just bring down a couple of glasses as well, and there ought to be a corkscrew in that drawer."

I don't know why I'm doing this for him, thought Ginny. I ought to put this corkscrew right through his head! She slammed the bottle down on the table with possibly unnecessary force, and Draco smiled crookedly at her, his top lip sliding into the dimples in his cheeks. She groaned silently. That was why.

"Malfoy, your eyebrows are still all wet," she said.

He raised them. "Really? Give me a dishtowel, Weasley." He pressed it carefully to each dark-blond brow.

"Did you have to go very far?" she asked.

"For what?"

"When you were out in the storm. Is that how you got so wet?"

His smile twisted slightly. The dimples slid back even further. "Yes. I did. And I did get soaked, didn't I?" He ran a hand through his blond hair, the shade a little darker now from rainwater. He filled her glass. "I think you'll like this, Weasley. Why don't you try it and tell me what you think?"

Ginny sipped. It was crisp and light and spicy, almost peppery. "Malfoy, you must have had to stay outside for an awfully long time, whatever you were doing—"

"Drink up, Ginny. Isn't that good?"

Something teased at the back of her mind. There are ways to get the truth… "Yes, but- I just don't see how you could have got soaked to the skin otherwise-"

"Oh, you don't, do you? Well, that's what happened, all right." Draco leaned back slightly and pulled at his sodden white shirt. Ginny's eyes glued themselves to the smooth, bare skin revealed as all of his top buttons came loose. "I really ought to get this off, I suppose. My trousers are even worse… how about some more?" He tipped the wine bottle into her glass again before she had a chance to protest.

"Malfoy, why did you have to spend so long standing around outside?" asked Ginny. "Couldn't you have gone indoors? What were you doing?"

For the briefest instant, Draco gave her the odd searching look again. Then he shivered. "I think I've got to at least take this shirt off, or I'll freeze," he said. "Think of how dreadfully inconvenient that would be, Weasley."

Awful, thought Ginny, but she was having some difficulty in forming coherent words, because Draco had already undone the rest of the buttons on his shirt while talking, and now he was slipping it off his shoulders. She fully saw his nude body above the waist for the first time, or at least he might as well have been nude; his wet silk undershirt clung to him like a second skin. It only emphasized his surprisingly broad shoulders, and his corded arms, his sinewy chest and oh gods his tiny male nipples were erect from the cold, which forced her unruly dazed mind to think about what else might be erect, if not now, because it really was rather cold for that, then soon. And all of his ripply muscles just sort of tightened down to the beautiful lean shape of his waist and then tucked themselves neatly into his trousers, which were soaked with rainwater, too, and would clearly have to come off. Ginny looked up into the mirror above the fireplace, saw her own face, and devoutly wished that she could cast a quick Illusion charm. Damn Draco Malfoy for the effect he was having on her. He had to know it.

"Will you stop the striptease for a moment, Malfoy?" she asked tightly.

One damp, dark-blond eyebrow went up. "I beg your pardon, Weasley? You're the one who wanted me to get out of these clothes."

"I know what you're trying to do, and it's not going to work! What the hell were you doing out there for all that time?"

Draco leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. "You really want to know?"

"Yes!"

"Fine. I'll tell you. But I'd like you to remember that you asked for this. I tried to change the subject. I didn't particularly want you to know—"

"Well, I want to know!" yelled Ginny. "And I want to hear why you didn't tell me the truth before, Malfoy, whatever it turns out to be. Did you think I couldn't handle it?"

Draco sighed. "I think I'm surprised that it hasn't occurred to you already, Weasley."

"I don't understand what you mean."

"Do you think you could cast your memory back to the events of, oh, two hours ago?" he asked, in the clipped, superior tones that always seemed to drive her blood right up to boiling point whenever he adopted them. "Do you remember someone chasing us through the catacombs of Gringotts? A certain someone named Potter, along with the bushy-haired jumped-up Muggle Granger, and the rest of the gang of usual suspects? Is this starting to ring a bell? Yes? Well, what did you think happened to them, Ginny? Do you think they threw their hands up and said,'Oh, Draco Malfoy's disappeared, and even though we've labeled him Wizarding Public Enemy Number One, I suppose we'll just skip off back to the Ministry'?"

"They followed us," whispered Ginny.

"Very good," said Draco. "Full marks, Miss Weasley."

"But how? I didn't see them coming behind; they couldn't have possibly tracked our Apparition traces."

Draco looked away from her. The last bit of the smile disappeared. Ginny's heart sank.

"Through the Imperius test link," she said.

He nodded.

"I had no idea that kind of thing was even possible. I mean, this is a Malfoy property; shouldn't it be Shielded by complicated Dark evil spells, or protected by giant mutant squid flobberworms, or something—"

"I just knew I'd have to listen to this."

"Listen to what? All I'm saying is that I don't see how they were able to follow us here through an Imperius link."

"Here we go, with the dreary Gryffindor breast-beating," continued Draco. "Why do you think I didn't want to tell you?"

"Do you honestly think I'm blaming myself?" demanded Ginny. "Because I'm not doing any such thing, Malfoy, I can tell you that! This wasn't my fault. Harry and Hermione forced me to take an Imperius test, I didn't want to, Merlin knows-" She broke off. The memory was still too fresh in her mind.

There it was, she thought. That strange, searching look. It had flashed from Draco's eyes again, and it was directed at her, but it had lasted no more than a fraction of a second this time. She couldn't be sure that she had even seen it at all.

"Of course you didn't," said Draco. "But that's a very powerful sort of link, Weasley. It's why Potter was able to follow you here, and he couldn't manage to do that without following me as well. He couldn't have possibly set foot on a Malfoy property any other way, and I'm sure that the entire Department of Mysteries is in raptures over that."

"Oh," said Ginny, weakly.

"I've spent the last hour and a half in tricking Potter, Granger, and the Aurors into returning to the Ministry. They're gone now, but I'm afraid that I can never be sure they won't be able to find some way to return, now that they've been here once. And now that you know the whole story, Weasley, please refrain from drowning in Gryffindor guilt," said Draco. "It's hardly your fault."

Did she feel guilty now? No, of course not. She would have done just about anything to avoid being forced into that test. And yet…

"Is he—are theyall right?" she asked.

Something flashed through Draco's eyes and disappeared. "Everyone's perfectly all right," he said. "Don't worry, Weasley; I haven't dumped Potter into Lyme Bay as plesiosaur food, much as he deserves it." He turned and winced. "Fuck. Well, everyone's all right except for me." He pressed a hand to one side. Ginny's eyes widened. An ugly purple-black bruise was deepening along the pale skin beneath his ribs, wrapped around to his back.

"Malfoy, how did that happen?"

"Nothing. It's nothing. I was leading Potter towards an Apparition point and I slipped and fell on a patch of rocks—" Draco drew in his breath sharply as Ginny's fingers tentatively explored the edges of the bruise, mottled with red.

"Let me heal it," she said.

"It's all right," he said. "I've taken care of it already. There's nothing more you can do."

"There's got to be something. Does this hurt? How about this?"

His skin felt so soft and smooth under her fingers, and she could just barely feel the ridges of muscle beneath because she had to touch him so lightly. Gods, what was wrong with her? She was getting off from touching an injured man! She glanced guiltily up at him, but his eyes were closed. Suddenly, she felt distinctly guilty about the striptease comment. This was Draco Malfoy, after all; he didn't have to deliberately try to be provocative. It must come as naturally to him as breathing. She was the one who'd told him he had to get his wet clothes off, after all, and then when he obeyed her, she accused him of using his masculine wiles to distract her from her fact-finding mission. But look at how that had turned out; he'd ended up telling her the truth, and the only reason he hadn't told her earlier was that he hadn't wanted her to feel guilty about it.

"Weasley, would you mind terribly going to that chest by the fireplace and getting a blanket out of it?" he asked. "I really don't want to freeze to death, you see. It's bloody cold in here."

"Right," said Ginny. "Blanket. Not freezing to death. That's a good thing."

Her face burned as she felt around for the blanket, stalling for time. She'd misread Draco all along. She must have done. Maybe he'd never really tried to hide anything from her at all, not from the very beginning. The gods only knew why he was so intent on keeping the crates a secret, but she hadn't found anything but a lot of random rubbish in them, had she? A chain of daisies, a lock of golden hair, a stupid book, a photograph of Draco and some stupid slag or other named Marie... (And that scrumptious portrait of a sinfully delicious sixteen-year-old Draco shamelessly eager for sexual initiation with you, her unruly mind slyly reminded her. Don't forget about that.) All right, but that was hardly incriminating evidence either, was it? The very fact that the secret initiation had turned out to be a purely sexual one was powerful proof against that; it certainly had nothing to do with Death Eaters or Voldemort. (What exactly had happened with that initiation five years before, whoever Draco's expert bedmate had actually been? Her perfectly evil mind couldn't seem to stop picturing potential answers, all of which went a long way towards providing ample explanation for Draco Malfoy's legendary abilities almost five years later.) She peered up into the mirror again, wondering if she looked even halfway presentable, or if all of her thoughts—as well as this appalling desire for all of Draco's wet clothes to come off instantly- might as well be stamped on her face in red lettering. And then she saw something else.

Draco peered down critically at the waistband of his trousers, and tugged them down a bit further. He smoothed a hand through his hair, practiced a dimple-deepening smile, shivered, frowned, shivered again, more elaborately this time, and then nodded minutely, as if finding his efforts satisfactory.

Ginny stuffed her head and shoulders into the cedar chest as far as they would go, waves of scalding shame poured through her. Oh gods. Oh. I was right. I was right! He knew just how I'd react to him. He did everything that he knew would work, and he did it so coldly, he was just using me! He probably doesn't even have a real bruise- I'll bet it was just an excuse to get me to touch him so I'd lose even more control. And I fell for it so easily. This is the worst, the most humiliating—But bwhy/b? What's the point of doing it? If he was trying to distract me from asking him questions, it would make sense, but he ended up telling me everything anyway.

Draco rapidly tapped his own glass with his wand and whispering something. As he did, the wine vanished. Then he moved his fingers over Ginny's glass, and the liquid briefly glowed green.

She blinked. Was he poisoning her? The answer came as soon as she'd posed the question. There are ways to get the truth. Ways that only a Slytherin or a Malfoy would use, or both. And there are ways to keep someone else from getting at the truth, too. She'd seen that spell before; her brother Bill sometimes used it on expeditions for Gringotts, and he'd shown it to her. If she went back and took even one sip of that wine now, she'd fall asleep where she was sitting. When she woke up in the morning with a headache, she'd assume that she'd just drunk too much wine.

He had lied to her, Ginny realized, or at least he hadn't told the entire truth. She didn't know if Harry and the other Aurors had been there at all, but even if they had, she just couldn't believe that what Draco had told her was the entire story. I'm going to find out what the entire story is,, she thought. She itched to turn on him and let the Weasley temper explode, but there were better ways. She had some dirty tricks of her own, and she knew just how to use them. Not that I would have done anything like this, otherwise, she thought. It just seemed too Slytherin to me…but I've been forced to it. I have no choice. I've got to beat Malfoy at his own game. True, her brother Bill had said that this particular spell wasn't exactly legal, although the goblins at Gringotts didn't much care as long as it worked on the French Inferi in Paris catacombs whenever they tried to get him drunk on a treasure-hunting expedition. But no woman on the Wizengamot would ever vote to convict me, she thought grimly. Not once they know that Draco Malfoy's involved!

Ginny checked the mirror quickly. Draco was peering down at his fingernails now, buffing them on the tablecloth. She pulled out her wand and whispered "In vino veritas." The spell bounced off the mirror and dissolved into the back of Draco's slicked-down blond hair.

"I don't think this is going to be enough, Malfoy," called Ginny, holding up the thin blanket. "It's so chilly for the time of year. I'm cold as well. I want to build a fire. Come and sit by me, all right?" There! That should convince him his evil little male slut manipulation plan will work.

"Of course," said Draco charmingly, walking into the living room and carrying the wine bottle and glasses. "We'll keep each other warm, won't we?"

She smiled sweetly back at him. Not if I throw your arse back out into the storm after finding what really happened out there, Malfoy.

He busily stacked wood in the fireplace, and Ginny narrowed her eyes. Why not just summon a house-elf? Maybe they can't come down to the cottage. Then why not get me to do it? It must go against the Malfoy code to actually perform unnecessary physical activity. Just think, it means that he has to move his arse. And his lean, muscled legs… and those ripply muscles in his back have to sort of flex in all those different ways against his spine… and I've got to watch the whole thing… oh. I think I've figured out why he's doing it. She scowled. This spell certainly didn't confer any protection against the Malfoy manly wiles. But nothing, nothing was going to stop her from learning the full truth now.


	16. You Don't Understand This Spell, Do You?

Thanks to all readers and reviewers!

+++  
Draco returned to sit next to her, letting the blanket fall open around him. The fire was blazing by now, but it really didn't seem to be giving out a lot of heat, and Ginny was shivering too. She pulled at part of the loose blanket without even thinking about it, which meant, of course, that she was pulling herself even closer to his bare chest.

"Still chilly in here, isn't it?" asked Draco. "How about some more wine?"

"All right," she said.

"It's good, isn't it?" He poured it for her, leaning close. The blanket gaped even further, giving her an even better view.

_Oh, he really does play dirty, doesn't he?_ "Very good," said Ginny, deciding that she might as well enjoy herself in the information-getting process. It wasn't as if she'd _planned_ to stare at the sculpted Malfoy chest muscles, after all.

"I do apologize for your being dragged into this mess, by the way," he said.

Draco had just overplayed his hand, thought Ginny. He should have known better. He should have realized just how suspicious it would sound for a Malfoy to apologize for anything at all. _Of course, maybe he thinks I'm so innocent and trusting that I'd believe any sort of shite he tried to feed me. Ha!_ She tried to look innocent and trusting. Batting her eyelashes would _definitely_ be too far over the top, wouldn't it?

"It'll all be straightened out in the morning," said Draco. "I'll take you back to London first thing."

"I'm sure it'll be fine," said Ginny. She lifted her glass. "Now let's drink to… _What?_ she wondered. _Friendship? No. Lusting-after-your-arse-ship? Trying-to-find-out-your-deepest-secrets-ship?_ "Acquaintanceship," she finally said.

"Ah, yes, acquaintanceship," said Draco. "Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind, and all that. Cheers, Weasley." They clinked glasses, and drank.

She lifted her eyes and smiled at him. He mirrored her smile. He really did know how to execute that dimple maneuver perfectly, Ginny thought. Then a very strange expression came over his face. Were his eyes actually starting to _cross_? He stared down at the glass in his hand.

"What have you done to me, Weasley?" he asked in a strangled voice.

"Nothing at all," she said. "Would you like some more wine?"

"Of course I wouldn't," he said. "Do you think I didn't guess that you'd try to cast some sort of Truth charm on it? I could tell _that_ the moment you started to bat your eyelashes. I thought that I might as well let you amuse yourself, but I never thought you'd succeed. A saintly former Gryffindor shouldn't know any spell Dark enough to actually _work_. How did you do it?"

"Uh…" Ginny felt faintly alarmed. "_In vino veritas._ My brother Bill taught it to me once; the goblins at Gringotts use it."

"Should've known," said Draco. "Oh dear." He slid down on the sofa.

"Are you going to be all right?"

"I don't know," he said faintly. "I don't feel at _all_ well."

He didn't look well, thought Ginny, leaning close and peering down at him. His face was so pale and sweaty.

"Tell me the truth, Weasley," he said. "Is that the only spell you used, or did you drop in a slow poison charm as well?"

"Of course not," she said indignantly.

"You might have done. _I'm_ the only one in this room who has to tell the truth now," said Draco. "You, on the other hand, could be lying your arse off. And a very nice arse it is, too."

Ginny blinked. "What?"

"I've been staring at it all day," said Draco. "I'd quite like to get my hands on it. If you've poisoned me, Weasley, could I get a good groping session in first? You wouldn't mind that, would you?"

"I—uh—"

"You couldn't very well turn down a dying man's last request, could you?" said Draco.

"You're not dying, Malfoy!" she snapped. Maybe the spell hadn't worked after all. Maybe this was nothing more than another attempt to manipulate her, to distract her from any attempt to find out more about what was going on. _If so, it's working rather well, isn't it?_ that evil bit of her mind pointed out. _Or it could do, at least. Just imagine. We could have those big hands all over our body; all we'd have to do would be to claim that we really did poison him, and then-_ _Oh, shut it!_ snarled Ginny, in yet another go-round in the never-ending struggle with her own brain.

"I haven't poisoned you," she went on. "So you can dry up. It was just the _in vino veritas_ spell, although I'm starting to have my doubts about whether or not it even worked."

"Oh, it worked," said Draco.

"Prove it,' said Ginny.

"That's a very vague demand. You'll have to be more specific."

"Okay. Uh…" Ginny thought hard. What would Draco Malfoy most want to keep hidden? "Who's Marie?" she blurted.

Astonishment flickered through his eyes, or terror, or pain, she really couldn't tell which. He pressed his lips into a firm line, balling his hands into fists, shaking his head slightly.

"Answer me," she said. "Who is she? Who _was_ she?"

"She's the first woman I ever loved," said Draco in a rush of words. "All right? Are you happy now?"

No. Ginny wasn't.

"Why would you ask a question like that, Weasley?"

"It's not for you to ask questions now, Malfoy," she said. "_I'm_ going to ask them, and you're going to answer them." She turned away from him, staring at the wall, trying to regain her composure. _Stupid, stupid._ At least she didn't wonder whether or not _in vino veritas_ had been effective anymore.

"You seem to know something about how this spell works, Malfoy," she said. "I want you to explain it to me."

He seemed to have regained his composure as well, she saw when she turned back. "You mean that you used a Dark spell without even understanding it, Weasley?"

"I don't need a lecture from you. I just want to know what you know about it."

"I have to tell the truth," he said. "You do realize that's what 'veritas' means? Yes?"

"You have to tell me the truth about _anything_ I ask?"

"Yes." He gave her a faint, strange smile. "But you do have to ask the right questions, Weasley, and that's not as straightforward as it seems. Especially not when you're dealing with a Malfoy."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"It's something you'll have to find out for yourself—if you can," said Draco. "But there's more than one kind of truth."

"I'm not even going to ask what you mean by that. You'll just give me some sort of sneaky answer," said Ginny. "And you can stop all that theatrical shivering, Malfoy. It's not working on me."

"It's _not_ theatrical," said Draco, sounding hurt. "It's fucking freezing cold in here. That fire isn't doing anything to keep me warm; it's strictly decorative, really."

"Why would anyone have a decorative fireplace in a cottage?" Ginny asked dubiously.

"It really smooths the way with seductions," said Draco. "Laying her down in front of a crackling fire, and all that."

_Shh, Ginny. Shh. It was only a nightmare. It didn't happen at all. You'll forget it now. You will, won't you?_

He took her into someplace warm then, and made a fire, and laid her down in front of it, but she was still shivering so hard that she couldn't speak.

You've got to get those wet clothes off, he finally said.  
And you'll forget it now. You will, won't you?

"And I'm still sitting here in wet pants," he said.

Ginny jumped. "What? Oh. I forgot all about that. You really do have to get out of those, don't you? Are there any spare clothes here?"

He shrugged. "I really don't know."

She looked at him suspiciously. But he couldn't outright lie to her, after all… could he? No. If he could do, he would have lied about Marie. "Where would they be?" she asked.

"In the bedroom. Look in the dresser."

Ginny went off to rummage, trying not to look at the big bed in the corner. "This is all I could come up with," she called, walking back into the living room and holding up a pair of dark green boxers.

"Really?" he asked. "I would have thought there'd be a bit more."

She rolled her eyes. "There were loads of lacy lingerie, but somehow I didn't think you'd want to wear any of that. What was it _doing_ there, anyway?"

Draco gave her a sideways, dimpled smile. "This cottage is a spot for seductions, remember?"

_Damn it!_ Ginny couldn't quite look at him. She glanced at the half-empty wine bottle instead. _Have we really drunk that much? I suppose so._ "Your seductions, I suppose?"

"Sometimes."

She didn't really want to know more about that, so she just threw the boxers at him. _Thank gods I at least found those._

"Now turn round if you don't want your maidenly modesty to be offended by the sight of my dropping trou, Weasley," said Draco.

Ginny did turn round, rather pointedly. When she turned back, he was wrapped in two blankets. She tried not to think about the fact that he was wearing nothing but a pair of boxers in Slytherin green beneath them. _Plenty of other things to think about, the gods know… what should I ask him now?_

He was lying back against the sofa, his eyes closed. She glared at him. "Malfoy, this is no time to take a nap."

"Shush," he said.

She poked him in the side. He winced. "You're making my bruises worse."

"Oh, so they're real after all?"

"Of course they're real," he yawned.

"How'd you get them, then?"

"I told you. I slipped and fell. Can't you get me a cold compress, or something?"

Ginny bit her lip, feeling rather torn. It seemed cruel to do nothing at all about Draco's injuries now that she knew he wasn't faking them, and yet… well, she _could_ just wet one of the dishtowels by the sink…

Something moved. She saw it out of the corner of her eye. Draco was surreptiously taking another swig out of the wine bottle.

She pointed an accusing finger at him. "You're trying to finish it!"

He flushed. "Er…well, yes… "

"And it was nearly gone anyway. You already drank almost all of it when my back was turned!"

"Right," he agreed.

Her eyes narrowed. "I _thought_ we hadn't drunk that much."

"Good reasoning. Ten points to the Weasley."

"Malfoy, you know perfectly well that if you get falling-down-drunk and pass out, then you won't have to answer any more questions! Well, this isn't going to work. It's not!" She grabbed at the wine bottle and missed. His arms went round her, and she could smell dark chocolate coming off his skin, as always.

"You're pretty," he said, and his pink lips came closer and closer. Her eyes fell shut.

Then the colder air of the room hit her. She looked up to see Draco scrambling onto a chair and reaching into the cupboard above the stove. _The firewhiskey!_ she thought in a flash.

"Oh, no you don't!" she yelled, jumping up and grabbing at his legs.

"Too late,Weasley," said Draco smugly, lifting the bottle. She lunged desperately for his waist, wrapped her arms round it, and pulled him off the chair. They crashed onto the floor together, the bottle rolling beside them. He tried to reach for it, and she kicked it under the stove.

"Have I foiled your evil plot now?" she demanded.

"Yes," panted Draco. "I've got an awfully high tolerance for alcohol. _Gruner Veltliner_ was never going to render me unconscious, but a full bottle of kobold-brewed Maker's Mark Firewhiskey would have just about done the trick. Are you happy now?"

"Yes, actually," said Ginny, wriggling out from under him. That wasn't quite true, because she no longer felt his body pressing thoroughly into hers, but _she_ wasn't the one who had to tell the complete truth, after all.

"You won't be for long."

"That's what you think, Malfoy. I'm going to get the truth out of you now, and we'll just see how much you like it."

"So will you, Weasley, and I don't think you'll end up liking it much. You didn't understand how this spell actually worked before you cast it, remember. _In vino veritas_," he said. "How much of the veritas did you really want?" He looked at her with that strange, searching expression. "You're about to get more than you bargained for."

"Just what the hell do you think you mean, Malfoy?"

"You'll find out," he said. "Your brother didn't explain any of the… ah… _complications_ of this spell to you, did he?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, but you'd better tell me, right now."

"Of course I will, poor, poor little Weasley," Draco said gently. "_In vino veritas_ is designed so that the witch or wizard can gather information from the victim and then get out. If you don't get out rather quickly, then there can be… complications."

"Are you going to explain what those 'complications' actually are anytime soon?" Ginny asked aggressively. The uneasy feeling she'd had earlier was coming back in Snap spades.

"The spell rebounds on the spellcaster. Any Dark spell can do this, but this particular one… well, the effect is brought about in a specific way, which requires some initiative on the part of the putative 'victim', shall we say." Draco smiled, showing more dimples than wizarding law should ever have allowed, Ginny rather dazedly thought. "And whatever you might want to say about Malfoys, we've never lacked initiative."

Before Ginny could even begin to gather her thoughts together enough to ask what he meant by _that_ little statement, Draco had leaned forward and kissed the side of her neck, just beneath her jawline.

"But, you silly girl," she heard him say, while she was still gasping for breath, "no Malfoy has ever, ever played the part of a victim. He moved up to nibble gently on her earlobe, running his tongue briefly inside the shell of her ear. Every nerve on that side of her body gathered together and trembled deliciously. "Of course, I suppose I can't entirely blame your brother for not informing you of this particular codicil to _in vino veritas._" His lips moved down again, and he bit at her pulse point with exquisite care. "Somehow, I can't picture Bill Weasley laying a liplock on Inferi in the catacombs of Paris, or mummies in the Valley of the Kings. It all sounds rather less than enjoyable." Then he pulled back from her, just a bit, leaving her tingling and aching and yearning and absolutely _furious_ at him.

"But _you_ enjoyed that, Malfoy," Ginny managed to choke out. "Didn't you?" She didn't really expect an answer. She was sure she wasn't going to get one. But then she saw his lips tighten, just as they had when she'd asked him about Marie.

"You don't want to answer me," she said slowly. "But you still have to."

"Yes," he said.

"Yes to what? That you still have to answer me, or that you liked kissing me?"

He hesitated, clearly wishing that he could stay silent, just as clearly unable to do so. "Both."

Ginny couldn't prevent a huge smile from spreading across her face. _So I still have a weapon,_ she thought. _More than one, in fact!_

"Would you like to do it again, Malfoy?" she asked tauntingly.

"Yes. But I won't," he said in a clipped voice. "I'm going to get information out of you, Weasley, whether you like it or not. I'm not about to let you distract me."

She looked him straight in his beautiful gray eyes. "I'm not going to let you distract me either, Malfoy."

"Fine," he snapped. "So that particular sort of manipulation attempt is over and done with from both sides, then?"

It had all been only been manipulation, nothing more. He'd coldly used her attraction to him. Ginny was sure that she'd already realized that; she supposed that she'd known it all along, really, and it was ridiculous that confirmation from him should hurt. But it did. She blinked back tears. He was watching her keenly, and she was determined not to give his ego the satisfaction of a reaction from her.

"I suppose it would hurt your feelings if I told you that your girlish charms aren't irresistible, Weasley," he said. "Is that it?"

She shook her head vigorously. No. That _wasn't_ it; she couldn't explain what it was that had shoved her to the very edge of tears. His expression darkened.

"Let's just get down to business, shall we? I've got some questions for you."

"And I've got some for you," she retorted. "You've got to tell the truth just as surely as I do, remember?"

"Yes," he said. His smile stretched only as far as his teeth. "But we'll see who's more skilled at the interrogation game, Weasley."

"Why do you think you'd be any better at it than I would?"

He leaned back against the kitchen cabinet. "Voldemort used me to question his prisoners when I was seventeen years old," he said.

"Question?" she asked in a frightened whisper. "What do you mean, _question_?"

"The Death Eaters would bring them into Malfoy Manor," he said, without any change in inflection in his voice. "They'd be people who the Dark Lord decided he needed information from. He found that I was good at getting it, so he forced me to question them. He… he forced me to use any technique that was successful. Cruciatus, mostly. I couldn't tell you how many times I had to use that."

Ginny stared at the young man sitting across from her, and she wondered numbly what kind of mind really lay behind that beautiful face. She knew what she had to ask, even though she might get an answer that would send her running out into the storm, even though he might not let her go and then she didn't even want to guess at what might happen to her after that. It didn't matter. He had to tell her the truth, so she had to ask.

"Did you like doing it?"

"No," he said.

"Were you willing to do it?"

"No," he said.

Ginny thought about what she wanted to ask next. _Did you ever refuse?_ But how could that be a fair question? She already knew that the safety of Draco's parents, maybe their very _lives_, had to depend on his obedience then. Harry had never understood this; they'd actually almost had a sort of roundabout argument about it once, years ago, although it was couched in terms of whether or not Death Eaters should receive amnesty if they'd been acting in their families' interests during the war. She'd often wondered if Harry knew that she was really thinking about Draco during the argument, and if that was why he'd been so vicious, so unforgiving in his insistence that they shouldn't.

"Did Voldemort know that you didn't want to do it?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," said Draco. "That's why he cast Cruciatus on _me_ so often."

She swallowed painfully, picturing a seventeen-year-old Draco writhing on the floor under Voldemort's hands.

"Do you feel sorry for me?" Draco asked softly. "Sorry for the boy I was then?"

"I can't help it," said Ginny.

He reached forward and stroked her cheek. "Even though you were pining after Potter that year while he was off gallivanting on adventures? You _were_ deep into the pining process, weren't you?"

"Yes, I was," said Ginny, leaning into the feeling of Draco's fingers on her skin. They seemed to go right down to her bones.

"If he'd come back and told you that he wanted you to go with him, you would have gone, wouldn't you?"

"Probably. I think so."

"You would have done anything…" Draco hesitated. "Well, perhaps not quite _anything_. But you would have done a great deal for Potter then. Wouldn't you?"

"Yes."

"And that didn't change when he came back after his triumphant defeat of the Dark Lord, did it?"

"No," said Ginny. It was true that her old habits hadn't changed very fast when it came to Harry, she thought almost dreamily, even though her feelings certainly had, not that she'd realized it at the time. But Draco hadn't asked about her feelings. None of it seemed very interesting now. She smoothed her face against Draco's caressing hand, like a cat.

"I can almost hear you purring. What a pretty little pussy you are, Weasley." He leaned down. "You're reacting to my touch very nicely. Do you like it?"

"Yes." The word slipped out of her lips. She would have certainly stopped it if she could have done.

"Hmm. This reaction must be a side effect of the spell. I was hoping it would be. Of course—" Draco's touch was featherlight along her cheeks and chin. "Did you like it when Potter used to touch you, as well?"

"Sometimes." Yes, that had been true.

"_Sometimes._ I see." His voice was as dark and silky as melted chocolate.

Ginny struggled to think. "Are you taking back everything you said about using this sort of 'manipulation attempt,' Malfoy?"

"Perhaps," he said almost tenderly. His fingers moved down the side of her neck and lingered at her collarbone. They were splayed downwards, so that two of them pressed against the very top of the swell of her chest. "What are you thinking right now, Weasley?"

"I—I—" Why was it suddenly so hard to breathe?

"Tell me. You don't have any choice but to tell me. Remember?"

"I was thinking that I wished you wouldn't stop there," Ginny blurted.

Draco sucked in his breath. She felt his other arm tighten around her waist.

_I've surprised him,_ she thought. _He wasn't expecting that._

"You want me to keep touching you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "What are _you_ thinking right now, Malfoy?"

She could feel his body stiffening. "I'm thinking that I didn't want to stop either," he said. "So I don't think I will."

Ginny watched Draco's fingers move down, down, and then slip inside the blue jumper and move back up. _I should stop him,_ she thought. But she didn't say a single word. The fingers pushed her bra aside. They brushed across her nipples, firmly and deliberately, and then pinched them into hard little buds. The sensations rushed through her, pooling between her legs, and she couldn't keep a moan from escaping her throat. She pressed into him, arching her back, and his hands cupped her breasts even as he kept rolling her nipples between his fingertips.

"You like this, don't you, Weasley," he whispered harshly.

"Yes," she moaned. "Oh, gods, yes!"

His mouth came down on her neck again and she ground herself back into him. So many different sensations were pulling her apart, and yet she knew hazily that Draco was hardly even doing _anything_ to her; she'd certainly done this much before with other boys, other men, and none of it had ever had this sort of effect on her. None of it had even come close.

"And I could take this so much further now, couldn't I?" he whispered. "You'd let me, Weasley. Wouldn't you?"

Ginny nodded. She couldn't speak, but it was true. In this particular moment of madness, she might just allow Draco Malfoy to do anything he liked. At some saner time, she knew in the back of her mind, she would probably regret it.

He leaned down and nipped her ear. "Did Potter ever do this for you?"

"Yes," she said, because it was true; Harry had done exactly this a few times. She'd never liked it, she'd always rather wished somewhere in the bottom of her mind that he wouldn't bother with it and that he'd stop once he started, but he'd done it.

Draco's hands stilled.

"What?" she murmured.

"Did he ever get you into his bed?" he asked, pinching her nipples harder, right up to the edge of pain. She shifted uncomfortably, but the truth was, she thought, that she liked that too, in a shameful sort of way. _If he asks me if I like it, I'll have to tell him yes. Oh, I hope he doesn't ask!_

"Yes," said Ginny hurriedly. "I was in bed with Harry loads of times." That was true, of course. She and Harry had lain down in his bed together more times than she wanted to count for some decidedly uninspiring snogging sessions, none of which had gone much further than anything she'd just done with Draco. Once, she'd fallen asleep while watching a _Law & Order_ marathon with him, which had been one of their more interesting dates. Of course, they'd never had _sex_ in his bed, or even come very close to it, but that wasn't what Draco had asked her.

"Ah," said Draco. "Ah. Did you love… no… scratch that. Did you _think_ you loved him, Weasley?"

"Yes," said Ginny. And that was true, as well.

"So is that why you led him here?" Draco asked softly. "To this cottage? Tonight?"

Then he pulled away from her, letting her fall sideways so that she had to fight to keep herself upright by grabbing onto a cabinet.

"I—I don't understand," she stammered. "You mean Harry and the others really were here?"

"Yes. They were here," said Draco. "As you know very well. You should—you bloody well _brought_ them here!"

"But—" She started to struggle to her feet. He yanked her up.

"Malfoy, I don't even know what you're talking about," she said.

He gave a short, sharp bark of laughter. "What a load of shite. You planned all of this with Potter, probably Granger as well, but mostly Potter, your one true love—"

"He _isn't_-"

"Oh? What is he then? Your little fuck-buddy? _Little_ being the operative word, I'm quite sure!"

"No, no, oh, wait, yes to that one part—"

"Well, whatever Potter is to you, I suppose I don't really care to hear the exact details."

He would know if he asked her, she thought. But she wouldn't tell him without being asked.

"You've tricked me, Weasley. You've made a fool of me," he said. "I suppose I ought to congratulate you, really. No Malfoy should allow himself to be made a fool of. But I did allow it."

_In vino veritas. But there's more than one kind of veritas, he said. I understand now. Not just facts, but feelings. I didn't know… I really didn't… and oh, gods, what have I got myself into?_ "Malfoy, will you listen to me, please— it's just not like that, it's not what you think, I can explain- " Ginny tried to pluck at his sleeve. He shook her off and stuck his face very close to hers, beautiful, livid, and frightening.

"I don't want to hear your explanations. I don't want to hear what it's _like._ Let me tell _you_ what it's _like_. If Potter hadn't followed us here—hadn't followed _you_- then none of this might ever have happened."

"What's 'this'?" she demanded. "What are you talking about? What have you done to him, Malfoy?"

"Oh, so you do care about Potter's fate," said Draco. "Your concern is touching,Weasley. He's not your one true love, nor your fuck-buddy, but apparently there's something quite meaningful in between—"

Ginny's heart plummeted. "What the hell have you _done_?"

"I killed him and threw his body over the Cobb. He's plesiosaur food after all, if the prehistoric monster will have him, which I doubt. So the white wedding is right out, Weasley. That was nothing more than furious sarcasm, by the way, although I imagine that it _is_ a bit late for you to wear white."

She was in no shape to hear anything beyond the most frightening words. _I killed him._ She sagged against the table, not even seeing Draco's sneer.

"Upset at that thought, aren't you?"

"Yes! They'll catch you," she said, her voice ending in a sob. "They'll throw you into Azkaban straightaway, Malfoy, and they really will find a Dementor to Kiss you."

"Much you'd care. You'll be wallowing in your new status as the unofficial Potter widow. Skeeter will be wetting her knickers; she can devote an entire special glossy issue of the Prophet to the tragic love story cut short. The Boy-Who-Was-Murdered-By-The-Malevolent-Malfoy. You can give her a tasteful interview referring to the intimacies the two of you shared… no details, of course, it's a family newspaper, but you can tell _me_…" Draco leaned forward. She shrank away from him, but she was already pressed all the way up against the table.

"So do tell, Weasley, because you can't lie," he said. "I'm quite sure of the answer now, of course, but I need confirmation from you. I already know you loved him… or thought you did… but did you ever _fuck_ him?"

"_No,_" snarled Ginny. And then she slapped Draco Malfoy as hard as she could, right across his beautiful face.


	17. That Sneaky Slytherin Snake

Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: Nosebleed Nonsense, Tuesday November, Sometimes Selkie, vegand3, and donna darko. The I's are there in the first chapter because, well, all of this is posted on FIA too, and everything has to have HTML markup there. So it didn't get taken out in that chapter. That's ALSO why we're going to get to a point where the content becomes, um, different here from what it is on FIA. Because I can post Extremely Naughty content there, and here, I can't. Readers will be informed when that time comes. (peeks ahead) Chapter 22 is the first time this will happen.

"No, Malfoy. I never had sex with Harry," she said, rubbing her spine where the hard kitchen table had pressed into it. It gave her some satisfaction to see that Draco looked even less comfortable in his own position sprawled backwards across the stove. "Not that it's any of your business, but we didn't ever even come particularly close to it. If you must know—and I suppose you must- he never touched me below the waist, and he never saw me completely naked. He was absolute bloody rubbish at the snogging we did do, and that's the truth, and you know I can't lie just now. I saw him naked just once, when I caught him in bed with some slag down the hall from his flat, and I'd just as soon forget that sight."

"So you didn't have sex with Potter?" Draco asked incredulously.

"What did I just _say_, Malfoy?" snapped Ginny.

"Never? Not even once? I mean, I knew all about the slag incident, but—"

Ginny stared at him. "How on earth did you know about that? Oh gods, don't answer that question. I don't want to know." _Probably because she's in his extended slag network!_ "No. I didn't. Not even _once._ What? Do you think I wouldn't remember it?"

"I can't say, but I think it's more likely that you wouldn't have even _felt_ it," said Draco.

_Bit hard to disagree with that, on the one hand,_ her evil mind pointed out. _On the other hand, it would have been quite easy to walk the next day. After a first-time session with Draco, on the third hand-_

"Oh, do shut up," she muttered. "Nobody has three hands."

Draco raised his eyebrows. "I beg your pardon? Were you talking to me?"

"No," she said. 'And before you ask, Malfoy, I'm _not_ checking into the psychiatric ward at St. Mungo's for a relaxing weekend anytime soon! You can just answer one of _my_ questions now. Did everybody think that Harry and I were constantly shagging like oversexed bunny rabbits?"

"If I give you an honest answer—which goes utterly against the grain of the entire Malfoy code, of course, but I've really got no choice just now- are you going to hit me again?"

"I don't know yet," said Ginny.

He winced, but went on. "Of course that's what everyone thought. What else did you expect, Weasley? You were the adoring girlfriend who kept the home fires burning while Potter saved the wizarding world, remember? Naturally he threw himself into your willing… ahem…" He glanced nervously at her furious face. "_Arms_ the moment he returned."

She looked at him narrowly as a thought occurred to her. "But you didn't go along with everyone else's opinion, did you? At least for a while, at least not at first. Isn't that true, Malfoy?"

A strange look passed over his face. He nodded. She found that she didn't know why, so she didn't ask.

"I should've known that's what everybody thought," she said instead. "No. Scratch that. I did know." Ginny turned away for a moment, speaking more than half to herself. "Everyone else was so sure that I was obliged to fall over and spread my legs for Harry as soon as he got back from offing Voldemort. My mother let me take him to my room and then cleared everybody out of the house for the whole night right after the last battle, for Circe's sake. Everybody in the whole wizarding world just assumed that I was Harry's nice little reward after that. If anyone knew that I never laid myself down and let him at me, well, you think Rita Skeeter's always liked me so much, Malfoy?" She turned back to him. "She would've made me over into the 'Ungrateful Weasley Bitch' faster than you could imagine. She'd do it now, except that Harry still thinks we're going to get back together. I would swear he's never told anyone that it's been over between us for years."

"You've got to be joking," said Draco. "I'd wager all the Malfoy gold in Gringotts that Potter and Granger are bumping uglies on an all-too-regular basis—and in their case, we really _are_ talking about uglies, aren't we?" He shuddered.

Ginny shook her head. "You'd lose. And then you'd have to dirty your hands with actual work and ten thousand years of Malfoy ancestors would come back to haunt you, so I wouldn't bet on it, if I were you. I don't doubt that Hermione wants Harry, and she's more than welcome to him. They deserve each other. But I can tell you, Malfoy, he barely even _sees_ her. Harry's good at not seeing people when they're right in front of him, no matter what they want from him." It was strange, she thought, that she didn't feel anything anymore when she said those words. There was still bitterness in her voice, but it was only because her pride was hurt, not her feelings.

Draco's face darkened. "I'm curious, Weasley. Why exactly did you keep Potter at arm's length for so long? Are you holding out for the white wedding after all?"

"No, because there isn't going to be any white wedding with Harry," she said.

"Oh, there isn't! Oh, I _see._ So you've already disqualified yourself for that elsewhere. Rather thoroughly, I imagine. " Draco's face was starting to resemble a thundercloud now. "What will you wear for Potter, then? Red?"

"No, I'm not wearing anything, because—"

"The always tasteful _nude_ wedding! Never let it be said that Weasleys don't have any class. Tell me, will wedding photographs be available? Will they be published in _Playwizard?_ Do your brothers know about this?"

"I'm trying to tell you, Malfoy," said Ginny through clenched teeth, "that I won't be wearing white, red, or anything else, because there isn't going to be a wedding! I'm not marrying Harry. Not now. Not ever. I wouldn't marry him if he were the last man on earth. Although if it was between him and you, I think I'd pick the giant squid right about now. Tell me, just out of curiousity- do you make a habit out of backing girls up against kitchen tables and demanding to know if they've ever fucked their boyfriends, when it's none of your fucking business in the first place?"

"No," muttered Draco. "I've never done that before."

"I don't know why it was so important to you anyway," said Ginny, half to herself. _Was that a question?_ It certainly didn't sound like one, which meant that Draco didn't have to answer it, she supposed. She could turn it into one so easily. A strange, dark, closed look came over Draco's face, and she knew that he was thinking the same thing.

"I thought—" he began.

"Well, you shouldn't have _thought_," said Ginny. Somehow, she found that she did not want to press Draco in order to find out exactly what he'd been thinking at that moment. "All you ever had to do was ask, Malfoy, if the subject really fascinates you much, and now you know. I haven't shagged Harry."

"I know that now. But did you bring Potter and the others here?" he asked.

"No," she said. "Did they really get here through the Imperius test link?"

"Yes, they did." He gave her a long, measured look. "Did you willingly have that test done as part of your plan with Potter?"

"No," said Ginny. "And if you ask me that again, I'll punch you."

Draco sighed.

"Ask me if there was any sort of plan I cooked up with either Harry or any of the Aurors."

"All right. Was there?" His voice sounded very dull.

"Of course there wasn't. I'd _never_ plan anything with Harry, or Hermione, or any of them. I'd never take part in anything like that against you, Malfoy." She blinked back the prickly feeling behind her eyes. _Wait for me,_ he'd said. _Gods, what have I waited for?_ "I don't know what's going to happen with the Department of Mysteries when I get back to London, but for all I know, I'm going to have loads to answer for as well. I've landed myself in trouble with Harry that I may never manage to get out of again, and if you think he's going to go any easier on me because of our past together, you're wrong." She turned to him. "So I've risked a lot for you today, Malfoy, and I don't even know _why._ I don't understand it. You can ask me all you like, and I still couldn't tell you."

He was silent for a moment. Then he picked up the bottle of firewhiskey, and before she could make a move, he'd polished off about half of it.

"What was that?" she demanded. "Oh! Don't tell me. Let me guess. You're planning to pass out on me now. Very brave, Malfoy."

"I am _not_," he said, sounding distinctly hurt. "Malfoys have a great many noble qualities, but courage isn't one of them. I need a bit of chemical assistance for my next plan. Moral support, you might say. Help me up. Ooh…"

He swayed on his feet, clutching onto the kitchen table. Then he moved swiftly to the coat rack by the door and yanked his cloak off it, putting it on with jerky motions. He picked up his wand and started drawing a circle.

"Malfoy, what do you think you're doing?"

"Come on, Weasley. With your usual persci—percipi—precipati—" he leans closer to her. "What's the word I'm looking for?"

"Perspicacity," said Ginny. 'Malfoy, this isn't a bloody vocabulary test! I asked you what you're—"

He flapped a hand. "That word's too long. With your usual cleverness, you ought to be able to figure out my perilously evil plot." He continued to trace the circle. An _Apparition_ circle, Ginny realized with horror.

"Are you out of your mind?" she demanded. "You can't Apparate in that state! You'll splinch yourself into about a zillion pieces!"

"No, I'm not," he said. "Out of my mind. It would be easier if I were. St. Mungo's doesn't sound so bad, right about now. And I'll have you know, Weasley, I passed my Apparition test after…" He frowned. "Six tries? Seven?" He stared owlishly at his hand. "How many fingers do I have again?"

"How drunk _are_ you, Malfoy?"

"Oh, I'm much more pissed than I seem to be, really," he said. "I can sound quite reasonably coherent right up until the end. It's a Malfoy trait." He frowned in concentration and attempted to close the… well, it was obviously supposed to be a circle, but Ginny thought that it looked more like a figure eight drawn by a thoroughly intoxicated giant squid.

"Malfoy, listen to me," she said, trying to keep her voice calm. "Don't do this."

"I've got to do it," he said.

"I can't _let_ you do it."

"Your concern is very touching. Now get out of my way. Shoo!" He tried to push her to one side, but he was so unsteady on his feet that the attempt didn't get very far.

"We can leave in the morning, Malfoy," she said. "Remember that leaving-in-the morning plan? Wasn't that a good plan?"

Draco sighed. "Weasley, how can I convince you to give me up as a lost cause? Just let me alone. Turn your efforts on something more worthy, like nursing orphaned flobberworms, or founding the Society for the Preservation of Halfblood Kneazles."

She grabbed his shoulders and turned him round. "Stay here and sleep it off," she said firmly. "You could stay on the couch; there are loads of blankets—"

Draco's eyes narrowed, and his eyebrows drew together into one dark-blond line. "Oh, wouldn't you just love _that_. Are you planning to run a repeat of last year?"

Every bit of blood in her body seemed to rush to her face. "Wh—what?" she stammered.

Draco shook a forefinger at her and clucked his tongue, or at least she was reasonably sure that tongue-clucking was what he was trying to do, except that he seemed to be missing the tongue-and-teeth connection and the whole thing looked more like air-kissing. "I'm on to you, Weasley. You'll deposit me on that couch, throw on a pile of bloody _blankets_, sweetly say good-night, and then sneak out of the bedroom at three in the morning to coldly practice your womanly wiles on me again. Well, you won't get away with it this time!"

_I know exactly what you did that night in that cottage,_ photograph-Draco had told her only a few hours before, smirking. _I have all of real-Draco's memories, remember?_ The real Draco remembered that night too, Ginny thought despairingly. He'd known about it all along. He'd known for an entire _year_ that she'd moaned in pleasure as she brought herself to orgasm while touching his sleeping body and looking down at his sleeping face, except that he hadn't been sleeping at all. _There's got to be a spell that I could use to sink through this floor. No… that would probably just lead me right to the Malfoy torture chambers._

"I don't know what you're talking about, Malfoy- _ow!_"

"You've just learned about another fascinating feature of _in vino veritas_," said Draco. "Whenever you try to tell an outright lie, there's a sensation very like a stab in the back. But telling the truth gives you a nice floaty feeling. Or is that just the firewhiskey?"

"Oh, all right!" yelled Ginny, holding her lower back. She certainly wasn't going to risk doing _that_ again. The pain reminded her too much of the time she'd tried to move her bed in her Gryffindor dormitory room so that it wasn't so close to Priscilla Pryingsley, the roommate who always gave her the knowing looks on the mornings after one of those irritating dreams about a grey-eyed boy with blond hair and a smart mouth. Rather like the one who was smirking at her right now.

"All right, I _do_ know what you're talking about, Malfoy," she said stiffly. "What I did that night was wrong. Horribly wrong. I'm going to hell because of it. There. Are you satisfied now?"

"I certainly wasn't satisfied _then_. But at least I learned how you look when you make yourself come. Oh, don't cover your face that way, Weasley… I was about to say, you're so pretty when you moan in the throes of self-induced climax. I should've taken a picture."

"Ooh! You sneaky snake—"

"Wish I'd had a camera."

'I'm going to slap you again!"

"Ah, ah…" Draco grabbed both of Ginny's wrists in one hand in a lightning-quick motion and looked at her thoughtfully. "You know, I could've had posters made and then sold through vendors on Portobello Road. I'd have allowed you to keep the profits. I do know you need the money. Don't you think one would have looked good on the wall of the break room at Flourish and Blotts?"

"You Slytherin scum!" shrieked Ginny. "You just go ahead and _try_ to Apparate! There'll be bits of blond hair from here all the way up to Hogwarts!" She wrenched her wrists out of his grip.

The cheerful expression dropped away from Draco's face. He made a quick semicircular motion with his hand and disappeared, leaving Ginny staring at the sickly puff of smoke where he had been.

She gave a long, long sigh, picturing wisps of silver-blond hair strewn across the rocks outside. _He can't have got far. Not considering the state he's in. And if he thinks he's getting away with merely being splinched into a thousand pieces after all of that shite, well, he's never felt the wrath of Ginny Weasley, that's all I can say. _She set her jaw in the attitude of grim determination that had terrorized all of her brothers since she was three years old and had discovered how to cast a fearsome Disorientation hex on a Sit n'Spin, and starting rummaging in the hall closet for a rain cloak.

A gust of wind and rain hit her in the face as soon as she opened the door, and she almost staggered back at her first step. She tugged her waterproof hat more firmly around her ears and yanked up her rubbed galoshes, and doggedly started through the storm. She had to bend almost double so that the gale-force winds didn't simply knock her over, and she could hardly see a thing, but she could sort of tell that she was picking her way along a path through patches of boulders and cleared fields on either sides. When she glanced up between bouts of wind, a huge house with marble pillars loomed in the distance. _The Malfoy estate._ Was it possible that Draco had Apparated there?

_Of course it is,_ she realized. _And of course he has. It's the only thing that makes sense. _But in that case, how on earth was _she_ ever going to get in? Ginny somehow didn't think that a bedraggled, muddy Weasley knocking at the front door had much of a chance. She could just imagine how badly that particular little project would go…  
_  
Ginny knocked weakly on the massive front door of the manor. It opened, revealing a dry, clean, impeccably dressed Draco Malfoy. He sneered down at her._

"What do _**you**__ want, Weasley?"_

"L—l—let me in, Malfoy," she managed to stutter through the middle of her coughs.

"Ugh." He brushed his lapels with immaculately manicured fingers. "You're getting Weasley germs on me. The dry-cleaning elves will never be able to hex them out."

She looked up at him pitifully. "But I struggled through rain and mud and storms and floods to get to you, Malfoy. I had to see if you were all right, even though you're a cold, miserable bastard who deserves to be tied down naked and covered in treacle syrup, all of which should be licked off very, very slowly."

"Yes, Weasleys are stupid that way, aren't they?" said Draco. "And I'd prefer cold, miserable, dead sexy bastard, if you don't mind. Although I do rather like that idea about bondage and treacle syrup. I'll have to keep it in mind for future reference."

"You mean you'll let me in after all, but only as your sex-kitten play toy?" Ginny asked indignantly. "That sounds dreadful, Malfoy. Absolutely horrid. Open that door and point me towards the kitchen, would you?"

Draco drew himself up to his full height and looked down his long, aristocratic nose at her, his very worst _**ten-thousand-years-of-pureblood-inbreeding-have-produced-my-flawless-arse-as-well-as-other-impressive-body-parts, and-yet-I've-somehow-managed-to-avoid-having-three-heads-as-well**__ look firmly pasted to his face. "I don't mean __**you**__, Weasley," he drawled. "I'm referring to my lovely fiancée, of course." He snapped his fingers. "Astoria…?"_

"Yes, darling?" The blonde woman promptly pasted herself to Draco's side, a superior smile on her horselike face.

"I'll have my barrister add that particular codicil to the marriage contract tomorrow," he said. "Bondage. Treacle syrup. Just a head's up."

Astoria shuddered. "All that, and I have to endure vanilla sex with you as well. I suppose it's worth it to get my hands on the Malfoy money, though."

Ginny stabbed her finger into Draco's chest. He looked alarmed.

"Now you're smearing _**mud**__ on me. Is there no limit to Weasley perfidy—"_

"Shut it, you upper-class twit! You can't marry _**her**__. She's a greedy bitch, and she doesn't even want to __**fuck**__ you. And it's not because of maidenly modesty, trust me."_

"You're just saying that because this entire episode is nothing more than your twisted little fantasy," spat Astoria.

"Oh, no I'm not," said Ginny. "I've heard all the stories about you. Your school nickname was 'All Access Astoria' for a reason!"

"I'll thank you to stop insulting my lovely fiancée," interrupted Draco. "I'm the only who's allowed to insult her, because nobody else does it half as well as I do, and I hate to watch amateur attempts. Anyway, I suppose that _**you're**__ as pure as the driven snow, Weasley?"_

"Well, uh…" Ginny blushed and looked down. "Actually, yes. I am."

"Really?" Draco asked eagerly.

"It's none of your damn business, Malfoy!" She glared up at him.

"That _**in vino veritas**__ spell is still in effect," he reminded her. "Even in fantasy sequences taking place entirely in your head."_

"This has got to be the strangest spell ever," muttered Ginny. "Fine. Yes, yes. I am. But it's not because I haven't tried to break the no-sex curse, because I have!"

Draco sighed in relief. "I'd so hoped that all of my perfectly evil plots had succeeded."

"What? What evil plots?"

He gulped. "Er—I suppose that now I've got to tell you, haven't I? The slag you saw in Potter's flat that day was very well paid to seduce him. I had to add about twenty Galleons to the fee once she received inside information about the size of his wicket set, of course. I cast a slight Befuddlement charm over your watch so that you'd show up at the precise time when they were in the middle of a shagging bout, or at least she later told me that's what Potter claimed it was. Lovely girl, by the way, but she apparently became a lesbian directly afterwards. Michael Corner didn't show up at this cottage last year because I hexed the transmission on your car and then sent several brawny elves round to persuade him to leave whilst he was sitting here by himself, waiting for you to show up. Colin Creevey is simply bent, of course, so no interference was needed there, and you saw what happened with Blaise Zabini. There were a number of incidents you never knew anything about… remember the shy copy boy who always smiled at you in the cafeteria at Flourish and Blotts? Well, it was necessary to threaten him with a transfer to Zanzibar—"

"That's rather creepy," said Ginny, "and yet shamefully sexy at the same time. Of course, none of it ever actually happened, because this is all part of a fantasy undoubtedly brought on by exposure to the elements. But if I were going to take any of it seriously, I'd ask you what the hell makes you think you have the right to try to control my love life when _**you're**__ planning to marry Astoria Greengrass?"_

Draco squirmed. "It's a bit complicated."

"You can't think that she loves you."

"No," admitted Draco.

"And you can't love her. You just can't."

"No, I don't."

"If she were someone you loved, really _**loved**__," Ginny said passionately, "then I could understand; it might hurt me so much that I wanted to die, which I can say because you can't really hear me and you don't really know about any of this, Malfoy, but at least I would understand. I would know how you felt if she was—if she was __**Marie**__-"  
_

But that was too much; even in her own thoughts, it was too much. Ginny staggered backwards, blinded by tears and rain and savage wind. Caught between fantasy and reality, she felt Draco's arms around her, and she couldn't believe that he'd hold her in either world. She struggled blindly against him.

"Stupid," she choked, "you're so fucking _stupid_, Malfoy, get _off_ me—"

He held her tighter; she felt her feet start to go out from under her, and he pulled them both over to the shelter of a cluster of boulders.

"Maybe," he panted, "but at least I have enough sense to _try_ to get out of the rain, Weasley."

She blinked at him. "You're real," she said.

"Unfortunately," said Draco. "If I were imaginary, I don't think I'd be so fucking _cold_." He sneezed.

"I thought you'd be at the Malfoy property. I thought that's where you were going to Apparate to."

"Why the hell would I do that?"

"Well—" she fumbled. "It would be the safest place, wouldn't it?"

He sneezed again. "Weasley, if I wanted to be safe, I wouldn'tve left that cottage. Oh fuck it's so fucking cold out here…What are you _doing_?"

"What do you think? Looking for you."

He smiled crookedly at her. "You really do love lost causes, don't you?"

There was something about his words that chilled her even more than the wind and the rain did. "Malfoy, come on. Let's go back to the cottage and at least try to warm up. We can fight about what a miserable bastard you are once we get there."

He shook his head. "I'm not going until I do what I came out here for."

"But I don't underst—"

"Shh!" His head whipped round. Ginny followed his motion, and she saw three figures moving on the other side of the path, crouching double against the rain. She couldn't tell who they all were, but with a shock, she recognized Hermione and Zacharias Smith.

"I thought you said you'd got rid of all the Aurors," she whispered.

"Not all of them," said Draco. "That was too much to hope for. I've got to draw them away from here now."

She stared at him. "Malfoy, you can't! They'll catch you for sure. It's a miracle they didn't manage it last time."

He looked back, his face very white and dripping rain. "If I don't get them out of here, they'll find the cottage and catch us. If I could've Apparated out of here by myself, I would've, and then I'dve come back for you. But if they found you here, you just might be right about getting in trouble you'd never get out of again. And you're right, Weasley. I can't Apparate all the way to London and I certainly couldn't take you with me. I'm in no shape to do it."

"So, you…" Ginny tried to shape her mind around the strange new concept that was presenting itself. "You thought about someone besides yourself, Malfoy? You did this for… for _me?_"

"Potter's not the only one who can be noble," he said. "In my case, though, half a bottle of firewhiskey really helps."

"You can't do this," she said firmly.

"We don't have time for a nobility contest just now," said Draco. "Shut up and get back under those boulders."

"I won't _let_ you do this. I won't get in any trouble at all with the Ministry. I'm sure of it," lied Ginny. "_Ow!_" That had been a _really_ bad one. As she clutched her lower back, leaning against the rocks, she saw Draco dart out onto the path. Hermione pointed at him from the other side, and Zacharias started to chase him. But, wait—and even in the midst of her terror, Ginny frowned—she'd distinctly seen _three_ figures a couple of minutes ago, not two. What had happened to the third?

Anyway, it didn't matter, because as a Gryffindor and a Weasley, her duty was clear. She had to help Draco in any way she could, even though this was probably a lost cause and even though she might very well end up in Azkaban in the very next cell over from him. For a moment, she toyed with her earlier idea. He'd at least _touched_ her now. He'd kissed her neck and licked her ear, and he'd cupped her breasts and squeezed her nipples (_mm… oh, this is no time to remember any of that! Stupid brain!_), so did that mean the Wizengamot would be more likely to grant conjugal visits now? Maybe they'd have to have sex _before_ sentencing in order for that plan to work. But where? After hours in the corridor? Under a bench in the courtroom? In a niche behind a statue of Brunhilde the Boringly Bureaucratic? Surely there had to be _some_ way to figure the problem out… Ginny began pondering it as she started out from the rock shelter.

Draco glanced back at her in exasperation and raised his wand. "_ Forstenede!_"

Ginny felt herself slither comfortably against the rock wall, which now felt soft and cushioned. Her arms and legs had turned limp, and when she tried to move them, they flopped helplessly. She sighed.

Hermione and Zacharias followed Draco to one of the outbuildings just above the trail, and he disappeared. They Apparated away, clearly believing that they were following him. Thirty seconds or so later, he wriggled out of a sort of invisible hole in the air. Ginny collapsed in relief, or at least, she thought, she would have done if she hadn't already pretty much collapsed because of the spell. _Oh, thank gods that the entire thing got over with quickly._ Draco was headed round the outbuilding now; surely he was coming back her way, and then they'd have to return to the cottage and wait until morning, wouldn't they? _Sex before sentencing,_ her mind slyly reminded her, and this time, she couldn't quite muster up the strength to silence it. But then she saw where Draco had really gone.

He was standing just round the corner of the building, quite close to Ginny, and he was leaning in to talk to someone. _That third person,_ Ginny realized. Whoever had been with the Aurors, he—or she—was it. The person turned her face. It was a she, as Ginny could clearly see. All too clearly. After a short exchange, she nodded, walked round to the Apparition point, and disappeared. Draco started back towards the rock shelter.

"Ah… sorry about that," he said, removing the Petrification spell. "But you know bloody well that you were coming after me, no matter what. Right?"

"Mm-hm," Ginny said calmly.

"So. Let's go back to the cottage. Nothing else to really do, is there?"

"Yes, let's," Ginny said patiently.

Draco shot her a nervous look. "Ah… are you all right, Weasley?"

"I'm fine," Ginny said tranquilly.

"Right. You just seem a bit odd…"

She smiled. "Do you remember the Bat-Bogey hex I cast on you at the end of my fourth year, in Umbridge's office?"

Draco's hand went reflexively to his neck. "Uh… _yes_…"

"Well, if you want to see 'odd', Malfoy, you should see the sort of hex I'm _going_ to cast, and _where_ I plan to cast it, if you don't tell me exactly what you just said to Astoria Greengrass."

Draco's eyes widened. It was rather a strange effect to see white all around the grey, thought Ginny.

"Surprised?" she asked.

"I had a Obfuscation hex over both of us!" he blurted.

"Well, well. Some features of _in vino veritas_ can surprise even _you_, Malfoy." Ginny cocked her head to one side. "But it makes sense, doesn't it? You were trying to lie to me by hiding what you said to her, after all."

"It wasn't like that," Draco said desperately.

"Oh? Then what was it like?"

'If you'll let me explain—"

"How the flobberworm has turned," she said. "I seem to remember _you_ not letting _me_ explain anything about Harry about, oh, half an hour ago or so. Tell me, how does it feel, Malfoy?"

"It feels like I'm going to fucking freeze to death!" he whined. "Look, let's get back to the cottage, and then you can try to hex my balls off all you like, Weasley."

Ginny studied his face. It was _definitely_ turning blue. Actually, it felt as if hers was, as well. "All right," she said grudgingly. "But don't think you're getting off the hook, Malfoy, because you're not!"

"I'm c-c-cold," said Draco, his teeth chattering.

"You're faking it to make me feel sorry for you," she said grimly, giving him a rather vicious shove to keep him trudging down the path.

"Am not." He stumbled.

"Why don't you get _Astoria_ to warm you up?" she snapped. "Why did you ever let her Apparate away, anyway?"

"Don't want her," mumbled Draco. "And I'm cold."

"You don't—" Ginny stopped. "What _do_ you want, Malfoy?"

"I want to not freeze to death out here! Don't stop in the middle of the trail. Keep going. And _help_ me, Weasley, can't you?" He grabbed her hands. His fingers felt like ice.

She let him lean on her all the way back, barely able to hold herself up under his weight, gritting her teeth in dogged determination.

"Maybe you ought to just leave me by the side of the road," Draco said at one point.

"Shut up and keep walking. You know you don't mean that."

"N—no," admitted Malfoy. "The n-n-nobility effort can only go so far. I'll bet we have to _crawl._ They'll find my corpse all covered with mud. I'll die of embarrassment. That's a bit redundant, isn't it?"

"Stop babbling, Malfoy, and keep walking."

The shape of the cottage finally, unbelievably loomed up before them. "Oh, thank whatever gods there are," breathed Draco. "Or just Loki."

"Are you delirious?" demanded Ginny.

"I don't d-d-doubt it at all." Draco fumbled hopelessly with the doorknob, and Ginny opened it for him. He fell in and stumbled against a chair. His eyes filled with horror.

"What? What is it?" she asked in alarm.

He stared up at the mirror over the fireplace. "My _hair_!" he squeaked. "It'll never be the same."

"Oh, that really was a bit over the top. Somehow, I think you'll live, Malfoy," she said dryly, forcing the door shut against the wind. "And I think it's time for a serious question and answer session now—" She was interrupted by a crashing sound. "What the hell was that?"

Draco was shivering so hard that he'd fallen against the stove. He looked up at her with big pitiful eyes. Sighing, she stripped the soaked cloak off and started rubbing him with a blanket. He leaned into her, trembling, and she could hear his labored breathing. "Are you sure you're not faking this?" she demanded.

"Exaggerating—just a bit—for effect," he said. "B-b –but no, not faking it. So c-c-cold—"

Ginny led him to the couch, draping the blanket over him and going to the cedar chest for another one. "Get those wet clothes off—well, I mean, the boxers, that's all that's left—" She stopped, and groaned inwardly. There hadn't been any extras in the dresser in the bedroom. This meant after Draco removed the ones he had on, there would be no replacements. But he couldn't very well keep them on; she could hear his teeth chattering from all the way across the room. For that matter—she shivered—her own teeth were doing the same thing. _Oh, ick. My clothes are all wet. They'll have to come off._ An awful thought struck her. There was nothing at all for her to change into… except the lacy lingerie she'd found earlier. _Fuck, could things get any worse?_

Her spine stiffened, and she cast a surreptitious glance back at Draco. His eyes were closed, he was leaning back against the couch, and his eyebrows were shockingly dark against his dead-white skin. He _looked_ innocent enough… well, actually, he looked deathly ill. He almost looked the way he had all during his terrible sixth year.

_But if he thinks that any of this is going to keep me from asking him about Astoria Greengrass,_ Ginny thought grimly, _well, he's about to find out just how wrong he is!_


	18. So Let's Just Finish the Firewhiskey

A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers, especially: Leigh151, writeyourlove, writeyourlove again, TuesdayNovember, and SometimesSelkie. SS, if you want to post Extremely Naughty scenes, just come on over to the dark side! AKA the FIA archive. ;)

Ginny hated turning her back on Draco for one second, but there didn't really seem to be any other option if she was going to get more blankets out of the cedar chest. _I wish I'd learned Fred and George's Eyes-In-the-Back-of-the-Head charm,_ she thought. _It certainly would come in useful where Malfoy's concerned._ She gave him one last suspicious look and turned towards the other side of the room. The lid of the chest was open (_funny, I didn't remember leaving it that way_,) and water dripped steadily into it from a leak in the ceiling. Every spare blanket was soaked. She swiveled her head round.

"Are you going to jump off that couch and run out the door in the fifteen seconds while I'm not watching you like an eagle owl?" she asked Draco.

"Of course I'm not going to do any jumping. I feel so ill," he whispered in a faint die-away drawl.

"Ill, huh? How ill?" asked Ginny.

"Uh…I don't feel _well_," he said, squirming slightly.

"Malfoy, can you honestly tell me that you're in danger of dropping dead right this minute?" she demanded.

"Okay, maybe not," he admitted. "But really awfully unwell. Don't you trust me?"

"No," Ginny replied without thinking.

At the look on Draco's face, her evil brain instantly piped up. _See? Are you happy now? See those big, pitiful tragic gray eyes?_

_Don't be ridiculous. That's the worst acting job since Colin Creevey fell off the stage playing the part of the giant squid in _The Tragical History of Hogwarts_ during the second-year Christmas pageant._

_It can't be an act and you know it. He can't lie to you. He knows that you didn't lie to him. And now you've hurt him…_

"Weasley, I'm _freezing_. Can't you get me some more blankets before I simply freeze solid into a six-foot block of ice? I promise that I won't try to escape while you do it," said Draco in a miserable-sounding voice.

Ginny sighed, and got up from the floor. Much as she hated to admit it, she was miserably cold as well.

_That's nice. You're going to keep poor, weakened Draco Malfoy warm while you slowly wear him down with hours of vicious interrogation,_ said the evil part of her brain. _By the time you both get back to London, he'll probably be fit only for St. Mungo's. Good plan, Ginny._

_Shut it, brain,_ she snarled back, stomping into the bedroom. _The only reason you care is because then you'd have a bit of trouble arranging the pre-arrest-shagging for conjugal visits in Azkaban._

_The conjugal visits would be a bit problematic as well, if you've driven him mad,_ her brain replied._Or, hmm… let's see… if he can only have them with someone he's already shagged… who would qualify… I just can't imagine…_

_Half the population of the wizarding world!_ Ginny started slamming drawers open. _And I'm freezing too. And there's nothing but that damn lingerie in here._ She held up a particularly dubious-looking item in jade green. Lavishly frothy amounts of lace and satin were involved, as well as decorative little bow ties in strategic areas, but overall, Ginny thought she might just be warmer in her wet clothes.

_Malfoy would like it,_ her evil brain informed her. _If you don't drive him round the bend, that is. Why don't you try it on and then ask his opinion first, before the relentless questioning begins?_

_Because I'm not marching into that room in satin and lace and bows and looking like a complete arse, thank you very much._ Ginny slammed the drawer shut again.

_It certainly would have shown your arse,_ her mind agreed. _What about that black lace thing?_

"_No!_" Ginny said aloud. She scowled and shivered. Her wet clothes were unbearably clammy, but she would not, absolutely _not_, stoop to wearing an unidentifiable knicker-ish type item with no crotch in it. Not when sitting on a couch very, very close to Draco Malfoy.

A sudden blast of wind whipped round the cottage, and Ginny shrank away from the cold, the soaked blouse and trousers following her icy skin. She could endure no more. She stripped off her sodden clothes and threw them in a heap on the floor, ignoring the triumphant crowing of her evil, evil brain. Flesh could only endure so much, after all. _Please, oh dear gods, please let there be something in this closet,_ she prayed, throwing the door open. Thankfully, a reasonably modest green satin robe hung on a padded hanger, and Ginny tucked it around herself, tightly tying the silvery-grey sash. She pulled down the heap of blankets folded on a shelf. Then she stood in front of the dresser, biting her lip.

_Go on,_ urged her evil brain. _You've really got to wear some sort of knickers, don't you? These would be better than nothing._

_I'm not so sure about that._ Ginny held the black lace scrap between finger and thumb, wrinkling her nose. _And, oh fuck… what if somebody else has already worn these? Like…_

_Astoria?_ her brain asked innocently. _That was the name you were trying to come up with, wasn't it? I was just trying to be helpful. Oh, come on, Ginny, don't tear them in half; they can't possibly be hers, a Malfoy would never do anything as tacky as leaving used lingerie in a drawer._

Ginny hesitated. Her brain had a point. And she really did have to wear something resembling knickers. No matter how vague that resemblance was.

_You really do need to wear them if you're going to try to compete with her, you know._

_Who said I was?_ Ginny demanded indignantly.

_Me. And I'm your brain, so I should know._

Ginny groaned. _It's really, really hard to win an argument with you._

_Ah, you're beginning to catch on. Ginny, you've got to up your game. I'm sure that Astoria would wear knickers just like that for Malfoy. I'm sure she has._

_Stop it stop it STOP IT-_

_Oh, come on, Ginny; let's face reality, shall we? Malfoy is beautiful, and he's a slut, and Astoria is just a slut. Of course they've shagged. Loads of times, I'm sure. Hmmm.. .remember what we were saying about conjugal visits in Azkaban?_

_If he has conjugal visits with Astoria, I _will_ murder him. And her. I'm not sure which one would go first, actually,_ Ginny grimly told her clearly evil and insane sex-crazed brain. _And he wouldn't do that anyway! He said that he didn't want her. He has to tell the truth under this spell! It can't be that bad… he can't really have ever cared about her, she can't be like Marie…_

_Don't remind us of Marie!_ Her brain seemed to be on the verge of panic. _And a Malfoy can probably slither out of any truth-telling spell if he tries hard enough. Come on, Ginny—you know it's true._

_Oh, fuck. You're right,_ thought Ginny with a sinking feeling. _I mean, I'm right, because you're my brain, after all. _

Her brain had nothing more to say. She pulled on the black lace knickers and then stared into the mirror on the back of the closet door for several minutes, running her fingers through her hair, before she realized that the entire cottage seemed ominously quiet. Malfoy was _clearly_ up to something.

He was in the kitchen, standing at the sink.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Trying to get a drink," he said, coughing.

"I'll get you a glass of water," Ginny said grimly. "Just move that lovely arse of yours back to the living room, Malfoy." _Oh, damn this in vino veritas spell!_ She just couldn't seem to stop telling more of the truth than she wanted to, even when she wasn't asked a direct question. _I don't think it's having that effect on him,_ she thought resentfully, grabbing Draco by the arm. _Of course, an entire lifetime's worth of practice in lying probably helps a lot at a time like this._

Draco hung back, leaning his full weight on her hand. "I used to do that to Bill when I was five years old and he was dragging me into the living room to get a spanking from Mum," said Ginny. "It didn't work then, and it's not going to work now. So you can just _stop_ it, Malf—"

Suddenly, his hand fell out of hers, and he crumpled to the floor.

_There. How about now? Are you happy now?_ asked her brain. _You've killed him. No conjugal visits in Azkaban for you!_

"Oh, _no…_…" Ginny sucked in her breath and got down on her knees. Draco was sprawled across the linoleum, his arm thrown back over his head and awkwardly stuck all the way back under the stove. She shook his other shoulder. "Malfoy, I—I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I didn't realize, it was an accident, are you all right? _Malfoy_! Speak to me, please!"

He opened one eye. "If I'd broken my neck in the fall," he said in a cracked whisper, "you would've just permanently paralyzed me, Weasley, by shaking me about like that."

"Oh! I'm sorry." She started feeling along his left arm, which seemed to be bent at the strangest angle. "How about this? Is this arm okay?"

"Yes, and it's a good thing. Because if it wasn't, I'd be in horrible agony from you pawing at my broken bones. For the sake of all humanity, please don't ever become a mediwitch, all right? Could you get me some ice?"

"Yes! Right away!" Ginny jumped up guiltily and ran to the freezer. "There isn't any," she called back after a brief search. "How about if I just make some cold compresses, and then we can—"

She stared. Draco was kneeling on the floor and pulling the bottle of firewhiskey out from underneath the stove.

"You sneaky lying scum!" she screeched, tackling him.

"I—I didn't lie," he panted. "I promised I wouldn't try to escape, and I didn't!"

"You pretended to be sick!"

"I _am_ sick. Hear me cough?" He rolled away from her.

"Not as sick as you're going to be, Malfoy!" She tried to wrestle the bottle out of his hand. He jumped to his feet and reached for the cork. She made a grab for it.

"Now, Weasley, you really ought to just let me get shite-faced drunk," he said coaxingly. "It'd be for the best."

"_How_?" she demanded, trying to yank his arm down. "So you could—get away with not telling me—about Astoria Greengrass?"

"Uh—yes. Got it in one, pretty much." Draco tried to raise the bottle again. Ginny gave a sudden, wild leap and batted it out of his hand, hard. It flew all the way into the living room and bounced against the rug in front of the fireplace. He tore himself away from her and ran towards the front door. Ginny darted in front of him and flattened herself against it.  
"I thought you wanted to stay in this cottage, Malfoy! Remember 'there's nothing else to do but go back to the cottage'? Does that ring a bell?"

"That was before I knew the Obfusc- obfussy-obfucky—oh, you know, that charm that was supposed to keep you from knowing I was talking to Astoria didn't work, and you _did_ see me with her," he said. "Now out of the way, Weasley."

"No!" Ginny curled her arm and hand firmly around the doorknob. "Malfoy, why do you want to go out in that storm dressed in nothing but soaking wet boxer shorts—'

"I do wish I could take those off," said Draco.

She sternly repressed the image from her mind. "Okay, dressed in nothing but a couple of soggy blankets, and probably freeze to death and have your mud-covered corpse found in a ditch, rather than just stay here in this cottage and tell me what the hell happened with Astoria Greengrass?"

Draco sighed. "Because… Weasley, if you've never listened to anything I've ever said to you, if you've never taken _any_ of it seriously, just listen to this." He looked at her seriously. "I told you that I was going to protect you from everything dangerous, and I meant it. That includes me. _I'm_ a danger to you."

"Why?" retorted Ginny. "What are you planning to do to me, Malfoy? Murder? Torture? Rape?" She stopped, remembering the black lace knickers. _Don't be ridiculous,_ her brain said slyly. _You know just how willing you'd really be._

Ginny thought that a little of that cold darkness she remembered from earlier came back into his eyes then. "Don't be stupid," Draco said flatly. "I'd never lay a finger on you—I swore to _protect_ you, and I will, no matter what—" He shook his head, and a pleasant smile pasted itself neatly on his lips. "But the best thing I could possibly do in that line at this moment would be to get myself out of here. Send someone for you in the morning. Colin Creevey, maybe; he's safe enough—"

Ginny shook her head. 'I'll see Colin when I get back to London—no, when we _both_ get back. In the meantime, Malfoy, you and your gorgeous, decidedly non-dangerous arse are staying here." _Oh, fuck! There I go again. But he didn't even seem to notice. Shite, maybe this really is serious._

"You don't think I'm dangerous?" asked Draco. "Remember, oh, an hour or so ago, when I told you that I killed Harry Potter? Does _that_ ring any bells, Weasley?"

She'd forgotten. Draco Malfoy had told her that he'd offed her ex-boyfriend, and she'd honestly _forgotten_ about it. Ginny's mouth dropped open.

"You don't have a very long attention span, do you?" he asked. "Don't Muggles have some sort of medication for that? Maybe you should look into it."

Ginny flapped her hand impatiently at him, her mind whirling. The evil brain was no help here at all. "I don't believe it," she finally said. "After that first second, I think I never really believed you'd done anything to Harry."

"Ten more points to the Weasley," said Draco. "Because I didn't."

"Yes, yes," said Ginny, "but…" She looked away from him, biting her lip. _Why not?_ It was a question she didn't even need to ask, because she already knew the answer. _Draco_clearly hadn't taken her at all seriously when she'd informed him that he was headed straight for Azkaban into the arms of a Dementor for a nice, long, all-too-passionate kiss (on the Dementor's side, anyway. Could even a _Dementor_ really resist Draco Malfoy? She wondered.) She hadn't stopped worrying because of any great relief that Harry hadn't been eaten by a plesiosaur after all, but because Draco wasn't going to get into trouble because of tossing him over a cliff him into the waiting monster's jaws. Never mind how thoroughly Harry had pissed her off today; there was still something rather disturbing about that thought. _He was my boyfriend for over two years, after all; you'd really think that it would at least bother me a bit if somebody had murdered him, even a certain snarky, sexy, astonishingly-arsed someone, who's pulled me right into the center of his evil web where he's busy evilly spinning cunningly evil plans of evilness!_

She glared at Draco. "Right now, we're not talking about whether or not you murdered my ex-boyfriend," she told him.

"I just _said_ I didn't. Yes, yes, I said I killed him, but right after that I went _on_ to say that it was just furious sarcasm, remember?" Draco's smile widened. "Where's your sense of humor?"

She felt his arm sliding round her waist, and she shivered, but it wasn't because of the cool, smooth feel of his skin. Then she realized that his hand was reaching for the doorknob. "Stop that! You're not getting out of here, Draco Malfoy!"

"I think I am," he said. "Weasley, please stop wriggling about like that— _ow_! Stop _kicking_ me! Look, even in the sinister, puppy-torturing, house-elf-head-chopping House of Malfoy, I did learn manners of a sort, and I've never used force on a girl in my life, but—"

"Oh, don't make me laugh!" panted Ginny.

"I _haven't_," insisted Draco. 'Except, er, well…" He squirmed. "When she agreed to it, I suppose you'd say…"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Don't make me explain this, Weasley," muttered Draco. "If your mother never told you about this sort of thing—look, _restraints_ were involved, but it was all quite consensual-"

Ginny's face flamed as she remembered certain whispered conversations she'd overheard about Draco and a certain Slytherin named Sadina von Tussel during the autumn of her fifth year. Handcuffs permanently affixed to the seventh-year girl's bedposts had apparently been involved. "Oh."

Draco smirked at her. "Yes, _oh._ Your education is rather incomplete in some areas, isn't it, Weasley?"

"Mmmm." Ginny squirmed, feeling the first twinges in her lower back. "All right! Yes! It is! Happy now, Malfoy?"

"Happier than I was before I heard that, actually," he said, peeling her hands easily off the doorknob. "Weasley, really. Give it up. Just how do you think you're going to stop me getting out of here?"

He was serious, she thought despairingly. And he was so much taller than she was, so much stronger. He was actually turning the doorknob, her wand was on the table where she'd left it, there was nothing she could do—

_Wait a minute. Where's his wand?_ In a flash, she knew.

Ginny had completely wedged herself between Draco and the door by now, and he was pressed up against her. The wet blankets had fallen aside, and she could feel his damp skin. She slipped her hand rapidly down into his shorts. His eyes widened incredulously.

"Weasley, what the hell are you doing?"

"Grabbing— _ow_-" Her lower back twinged for just a second. "All nine inches of your wand,' she finished.

"Weasley, I'm in the first stages of hypothermia. Even _I_ can't manage a stiffy under conditions like—"

She pulled it out and pointed it in his face. "Onto the couch, Malfoy."

Ginny decided that she rather liked holding Draco's wand in her hand. It was awfully long and much heavier than hers, and he just had such a _nervous_ look on his face whenever he saw her stroking it, which she was doing right now as they sat facing each other on the couch. _He really looks like the sixteen-year-old Draco in that portrait,_ she thought. _And he's going to do just as I say, too. Exactly like that one!_

"Do you think you're up to answering some questions now, Malfoy?" she asked pleasantly, rubbing the wand.

He rubbed his hair with a towel and pulled the blankets closer around him. "Uh… sure."

"Good. Because you're not slithering out of this anymore." Back and forth, back and forth went her fingers along the wand.

"Look, could you stop doing that?" he burst out.

Her eyebrows raised. "Why? Is it bothering you to watch me touching your wand?"

"Yes. You could say it's bothering me," said Draco.

"Too bad," said Ginny. She took a leisurely sip of tea, trailed the wand along one thigh, decided she'd tortured Draco enough, and set it on the table. "You can have it back later, if you're good, which apparently will be never." She leaned forward. "When I saw you with Astoria Greengrass behind that building, what were you saying to her?"

Draco gave a long, long sigh, and fell against the couch. He seemed to collapse back into himself, to drop the sunny façade, as if it had been so exhausting to keep it up that he simply no longer had the strength, Ginny thought. She had taken the last of it with his wand. "I told her to go away," he said. "To get out of here. To go back to London, to leave me alone."

Ginny tried to suppress the happy thrill in her evil brain. _That doesn't mean anything!_ she reminded it. _And getting a reaction from Draco Malfoy by playing with his wand may be fun—okay, it is fun—but come on; we know what a male slut he is, yes we do, now that he's getting warmed up by hot tea and blankets and at bit of a fire, he'd get hot and bothered over anything with tits in this damn satin nightrobe._ "How did Astoria get here in the first place?" she asked.

"She followed the Aurors. I suppose she came with Zacharias Smith," said Draco.

Ginny's eyes narrowed at Draco over her cup of steaming tea. "She was trying to get to you. Why?"

He looked away from her. "Because… because I told her I won't marry her. And she can't believe. Can't accept. She still. Wants."

_He wants to lie,_ Ginny realized. _He wishes he could lie to me about this. But he can't. _

"What does she want, Malfoy?"

Draco grimaced. "To marry me."

"Do _you_ want to marry her now?"

"No."

"Why'd you ever ask her, then?"

Silence.

Ginny waited.

More silence. More waiting. Ginny studied Draco's face, trying to make sense of anything she saw in it, but his expression was utterly blank. Finally his lips tightened, and his back started to stiffen.

_But he's held up under Cruciatus,_ thought Ginny. _He may never tell me. I thought this spell was supposed to get at the truth. For him, it does, because I can't lie. But for me-_

"Is she actually Marie?" Ginny burst out. "Is that her middle name, or a nickname, or something? Is she the first woman you ever loved, Malfoy? Tell me! Tell me, or the second I get out of here, I'll find Harry, and we'll—"

"No!" gasped Draco, doubling over. "_No_, Weasley. Don't you dare get within a mile of Potter again. Oh fuck this hurts…"

"Yes, lying does hurt under this spell, doesn't it?" Ginny said relentlessly, bending down close to him. "Explain yourself, Malfoy. I don't quite understand what you mean yet."

"You'd better not find The-Boy-I-Bloody-Well-Should-Have-Thrown-Over-The-Cobb, and Astoria Greengrass is not… she isn't who you were thinking. She isn't Marie. I swear to you, Weasley, I don't love Astoria and I never have."

"You don't—" Ginny repeated rather stupidly, remembering the drawerful of lingerie. "Look, I just have to know one thing, Malfoy. Those black lace knickers with no crotch in them, the ones in the other room- were those hers?"

Draco looked rather horrified. "You can't think that I'd do anything as tacky as keeping used lingerie about the house? Whatever you're talking about, it's new. The house-elves probably just snipped the tags off it."

"But I'm sure she had some like it," muttered Ginny. "I'm sure you fucked her enough times."

"I've fucked a lot of girls I didn't love," said Draco.

His words shouldn't hurt her. It made no sense that they did, no sense at all. "Then it's none of your business what I do with Harry or anyone else," she said coldly. "Not that I'm about to do anything at all with _him_, except maybe push him over the Cobb myself. But there are a lot of other men out there, Malfoy."

His eyes hardened. "So there are. You're planning to wear crotchless black lace lingerie for all of them, then?"

She cleared her throat. _I can't lie to him. Even when I want to, I can't. I'm not like him; whether this is good or bad, I can't do what he does. When I was a good little Gryffindor, I knew this was the one and only right way, and now I'm not always so sure anymore… but still, I can't do it the way he does. _"No, I'm not planning to," she said. "Not for any of them."

What she said hadn't really made him any happier. She saw it immediately. His hand reached out slightly, as if to touch her, and then he drew it back. "You're the one making me tell the truth, Weasley," he muttered. "But didn't I just _tell_ you I don't want to marry Astoria? You can't _imagine_ how much I don't want to. I'd rather put a noose around my neck. I'd rather chew my own arm off. If I could do anything I wanted, I really think I'd rather just drop dead. It doesn't sound like the worst idea, right about now."

"Don't be an arse," said Ginny. "You could outdo Colin Creevey in the drama queen deparment any day. You can't mean it seriously."

"Can't I?" Draco asked quietly.

She looked into his eyes, and a chill rippled through her that had nothing to do with the cold air in the room. _He's joking, of course._ "Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not about to let you off yourself, Malfoy," she said lightly. "You're not getting off the hook that easily."

Draco looked past her, out the window, into the storm. "Dropping dead _would_ solve all of my problems at one go, wouldn't it? There are moments when it doesn't sound like the worst option, really." His face was turned completely away from her, and she couldn't see his expression at all.

Ginny gasped involuntarily. "Malfoy, don't say things like that!"

"So you'd be terribly upset if I snuffed it, Weasley? Yes, how inconvenient it would be for you. You couldn't get back by yourself; you'd end up splinched in half because you couldn't get past the Malfoy wards without me. So unfortunate. Even if you somehow did make it back to London, the Ministry would have to know you were here, and you'd have no proof that you hadn't plotted with me—"

"No, that's not why! Just—just—" Ginny made a helpless motion with her hand. "Don't talk about dying, that's all. What a load of shite; that's the last thing I need to hear on top of everything else that's happened tonight."

"Huh." Draco looked at her thoughtfully. "I've brought you here without asking if you wanted to come with me or not. I've frightened you. I've got you in trouble. I've used you to try to get information. When you get back, the Ministry will probably bring you in for questioning. I wonder why you care about what happens to me, Weasley."

She swallowed hard. They were sitting very close, the blankets draped between them, and she could feel the faint warmth of his body. "I don't know. But I do care."

"You shouldn't. It would be better for you if you didn't." He studied her, holding himself stiffly away. "So why do you, _why_?" He leaned closer to her, and she leaned in to him, unable to stop herself. He smoothed back a strand of copper hair behind her ear.

"Because of this?" he whispered. His lips grazed her earlobe. She shuddered. "Or this?" Slowly, sensually, he kissed the side of her neck. She felt herself slowly becoming boneless, melting against him. "How about this?" she heard him ask. His hands were moving up her waist. His fingers were just barely, barely brushing the bottoms of her breasts.

"You'd like me to go further, wouldn't you, Weasley?" he asked her.

"Yes," she heard herself moan, because she did want him to, and because she couldn't lie.

"Oh, I see. It's because you liked it when I squeezed your tits," he said. "And you'd like me to do it again—"

Ginny shoved him back and away from her. "That is _not_ why! I don't know why. Malfoy, don't be a complete arse."

"I'm trying to get you to admit the truth, no matter what it takes," he said. He moved against her, his hands and lips and body mapping a symphony of sensuality on her skin, and her anger at him dissolved all over again. He gave a humorless chuckle. "See? I'm damn good at this, and I can make you want it, and I can make you like it. You really have no idea how much you'd love it all. You've never experienced anything like sex with me. You know that, don't you? You know that I could make you feel things you've never felt before?"

Ginny nodded. Yes, she certainly knew that.

"But that's all it is," Draco said. "That's all it would be. That's the only reason you think you _care_ about me, or what happens to me, Weasley."

She pulled away from him, deliberately. Her body shivered miserably and shrieked to return. She wrapped the blanket firmly around herself. "No, Malfoy," she said. "It's not."

He sighed wearily, sagging against the back of the couch. "Fuck." He drew his knees up to his chin, staring into the weak flames in the fireplace. Ginny followed his gaze. Something was stirring in the back of her mind, something she could almost, _almost_ remember. But not quite…

_- her and Draco in front of the fire on a rug, and we have to, she said urgently, between bites on his neck. When I'm awake, I hate you._

Oh, fuck, this is wrong! he said in a choked voice. You have no idea how wrong, Ginny… no idea…

She had let the other towel fall, and now she was completely naked. She was half-lying on the floor, and he was half-kneeling between her legs, but still holding himself away from her.

It's very right, she said.

I won't do this, he repeated-

He was saying something now. "—I'm weak. I'm just so damn weak," he was whispering.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," said Draco.

Ginny looked into the firelight, too. 'There are so many things I don't understand," she said. "I don't even know where to begin asking questions. This _in vino veritas_ spell…it really isn't as useful as I would've thought. Is it?"

"No, not really," said Draco.

_Except for one thing, I suppose,_ thought Ginny. She knew, now, that Draco didn't love Astoria Greengrass, and never had. Whoever Marie really was, this first woman he had ever loved, she wasn't actually Astoria. _That's something, anyway… isn't it?_

Draco leaned down and picked up the half-empty bottle of firewhiskey where it had fallen on the rug when Ginny had thrown it from the kitchen. He smiled crookedly at her. "Want to share the rest of this?"

"All right," said Ginny, and they did.


	19. In Which All the Trouble Begins

_I really don't have a great deal of tolerance for firewhiskey_, thought Ginny. Now that she and Draco had passed the bottle back and forth a few times, everything was starting to look decidedly fuzzy. Unless she held her head perfectly still, the entire living room started whirling round and round in the most irritating way. "Is that normal?" she asked Draco more than once. He just kept rolling his eyes and sighing every time, which she took as a no. Clearly, she had to reach out and touch him every so often, just to steady herself, and she couldn't figure out why that little bit contact with his bare shoulder always made her palm feel like it was on fire. It kept making him jump, too. All in all, she just wasn't sure how clear her thinking really was. And, as she regretfully admitted to herself, that might, just _might_ be interfering with her clever, sneaky plan to continue prying the truth about various things out of Draco Malfoy.

The wind whistled round the cottage and the rain beat on the windows outside, but Draco had wrapped her in the blankets on the couch and pressed himself up to her side, sharing his warmth with her. It seemed to have taken very little coaxing on her part to get him talking about Astoria. Ginny couldn't stop giggling at everything Draco said, because he was saying the _funniest_ things about Astoria Greengrass, and she knew, now, that he didn't love her and didn't even care about her at all. So that was all right. It was so very, very all right that it was like a bubble of warmth and hope buoying her up, keeping both of them afloat on a stretch of frightening dark water. Whoever Marie really was, this woman who Draco had once loved, she was safely in the past. True, she had looked like Astoria in that photograph, which frightened Ginny. She had wanted very much to find some way of asking Draco about it without giving away the fact that she'd opened the crate, but every time she'd tried, her tongue seemed stuck in her mouth. That didn't seem so important now, though, because at least Ginny had been able to ask what Draco really thought of Astoria Greengrass, and the knowledge was delicious.

Of course, there was the fact that she wasn't entirely sure how the subject had got round to Astoria in the first place. It seemed that she'd wanted to ask about other things, such as why they'd gone to this cottage to begin with, and why Draco was so convinced that he was dangerous to her, and especially why she kept remembering these odd, disconnected flashes from the night before. She knew that she'd been in Draco's flat. So why was it that she seemed to keep remembering things from this room? It all had to be part of a dream, of course, but if she could only ask Draco the right questions he'd have to answer her, and then it wouldn't bother her anymore.

"Dangerous questions, Weasley," Draco kept saying every time she struggled to ask them, and the words got caught in her throat. "Curiousity killed the cat. Didn't you ever hear that?" She always felt a twinge of fear then, but he smiled and handed her the bottle of firewhiskey again, and everything seemed to be all right. "And I'd hate to see anything happen to such a pretty little pussy," he'd added once. She'd smacked him for that.

But he was talking about Astoria again now. Ginny struggled to pay attention. She'd tried casting a surreptitious Sobriety charm on herself, but it wasn't very effective as wandless magic, and it was flickering in and out very badly.

"I can't stand a single thing about her, from her asinine name to her overdone toenails," Draco was saying now, swishing around the last few inches of firewhiskey in the bottle. "Really, keeping spa-elves about the house only for the purpose of pedicures is just too, too over the top. Don't you think, Weasley?"

"Yes. Definitely," said Ginny, wondering if this meant that Draco liked pedicures in moderation, or not at all, and trying to remember if she'd ever had one.

"And then there's her hair. Don't get me _started_ on the times she's ripped out extensions she didn't like that took eight hours to put in. And that _makeup_- she should take some lessons from Diagon Alley companions; they're much more refined. Ugh." Draco made a face.

"I always thought Astoria was sort of pretty," Ginny said slyly, knowing an egging-on opportunity when she saw one.

"I've got a good anti-Myopia charm if you need it, Weasley," asked Draco. "I have yet to see any girl who has such a stunning resemblance to an Afghan hound. A little more firewhiskey, please." Draco gulped at it and choked. "This tastes like something left over at the bottom of a flobberworm feeding bowl after three days of rain. It's exactly what I need. Thank you. _Hic._ Anyway, back to Astoria. Would you like to know all the other reasons why I don't want her?"

"Yes, very much," said Ginny.

"Astoria has- _hic—_ the most annoying laugh, it sounds remarkably like the death cry of a nundu after you've chopped its legs off. Haven't you ever heard that, Weasley? Well, it's quite annoying. Take my word for it. _Hic!_ Then there's the way she always whines when she's hinting that she wants me to buy her something, a diamond tennis bracelet or some such rubbish- _hic_- " Draco winced. "I hate getting these sorts of hiccups. They hurt my chest. And it gets worse."

"It does?"

"Much worse," he said, shifting his weight. Ginny put out her hand to steady him. There it was again! The fire in her palm caught and spread, and he pulled away. She thought that he looked extremely uncomfortable.

"What is it, Malfoy?" she asked. "The hiccups?"

"Uh… yes, it's that. And it's also that I'm still wearing those wet boxer shorts. They feel really dreadful," he said.

"Then why don't you just take them off?" _Damn!_ That was the problem, Ginny thought regretfully, but not _too_ regretfully. She just couldn't seem to stop saying things like that, and she wasn't at all sure that they went very well with the cunning plan to learn Draco Malfoy's deepest secrets. There were definitely reasons why she shouldn't pull him down on the rug and rip his clothes off and force him to show her just how damn good he was at the 'it' he'd referred to earlier. She was curious, of course. Even though she certainly had a general idea of what 'it' was, she was fairly sure that Draco Malfoy could introduce her to dimensions of 'it' that she had never even imagined in her wildest dreams. Still, she was sure that the reasons were really excellent ones. She just couldn't remember what those reasons _were_, at the moment.

"Because I'm not that drunk yet," said Draco. He looked away from her. "And I'm weak. But I hope I'm not that weak. I can't afford to be weak. Not now."

"Never mind that," said Ginny, not particularly wanting to hear any more. She rather thought that she remembered his already mumbling something earlier about not taking advantage of her when she was in this state, and she hadn't liked the sound of that at all. "What's the worst part, Malfoy?"

"I shouldn't really tell you. But I suppose I have to, don't I?"

"Of course you do," said Ginny, perking up her ears.

"First of all, Astoria Greengrass is- _hic_- selfish, inconsiderate, self-absorbed, rude, and utterly incapable of caring about anyone except herself," said Draco. "Right?"

"I remember how she didn't seem to be too terribly concerned that you might be turned into a soulless zombie before the wedding," said Ginny.

"Yes, some would say that shows less than a deep level of concern for one's life mate," said Draco. "Also a lack of caring, trust, and emotional commitment. _Hic._ But it gets worse." Draco leaned so close to her that she could see the little goosebumps on his neck. "It all begins," he said in confiding tones, "with the fact that she has absolutely _no tits._"

"No tits?" repeated Ginny.

Draco shook his head. "None."

Ginny almost reminded Draco that _she_ certainly had some very nice ones, as he should know, since he'd been handling them less than an hour before. But she thought that he probably remembered. Anyway, she leaned close enough to remind him. She wasn't wearing a thing underneath the green silk robe, of course, which she thought would probably help to jog his memory a bit. She heard his breathing quicken.

"Ah… anyway… that's only the tip of the iceberg. Do you really want to know the absolute worst?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, yes," insisted Ginny.

"Hmm. It's a tossup, actually. I can't decide if it's that she's even more curious than you, but in a far more annoying way- she really can't mind her own business at all, and then she has a terrible habit of using the information she finds against me at the worst possible times- or if it's the fact that she's the most bloody dreadful piece of arse it's ever been my misfortune to encounter in bed," said Draco. "Or anywhere else, for that matter. Dead flobberworms would have more passion. Blast-ended skrewts would moan louder—actually, I think they do; Hagrid never knew half the things that Marcus Flint got up to outside of class. Remember that nightmarish steak and kidney pie that turned up at Friday dinner during fifth year spring term at Hogwarts for a month running? It would probably inspire me with more lust than Astoria ever has. I mean- _hic_! not literally. Figure of speech, you understand. I never _did_ anything with the steak and kidney pie."

'But, uh…" Ginny hesitated. Asking the next question didn't seem like a good idea, especially because she already knew what the answer was. She asked it anyway. "But you certainly _did_ shag her loads of times."

Draco grimaced. "Yes. I closed my eyes and thought of England."

"Then why?" she asked.

"That was Queen Victoria's advice to her daughter Beatrice on her wedding night. Going over Quidditch tactics helped as well—"

"No, I mean why'd you ever date Astoria in the first place, Malfoy?"

Draco gave a long sigh. "It pleased my father. That's why. The Greengrasses are… that family is the most refined sort of pureblood. He wanted to breed them into the Malfoy line. It was a part of his plan, of his dream, of his _obsession_…" He drummed his fingers on the table, staring moodily into the fireplace. "And the Greengrass landholdings are right up against ours as well."

Ginny's brow wrinkled. "Is that why Astoria was able to come here?"

His lips tightened. "Yes."

"But you said it was because she followed the Aurors."

"No. She led them here."

"But you didn't tell me that before!"

"You didn't ask me." Draco smiled. "_In vino veritas_ is a strange spell, isn't it?"

"But…" Ginny's head whirled, and so did the room. "But then why'd you ever think that _I_ led Harry and the others here?"

"Someone tried to convince me of a number of things that weren't true. I know, now, that they were never true. Let's talk about something else, Weasley. It's silly to be so serious."

And it was, of course, and Draco was so beautiful when he smiled that way.

"Malfoy… I still don't understand. There's something so important, and I still don't understand it…"

"I'm sure it's not important at all. How about some more firewhiskey?"

"Uh… oh! I know. Why…" _Why did we ever come here in the first place, to this cottage on Lyme Bay?_ Yes, that was the question, she'd wanted to ask; she was sure of it. Or maybe, _Malfoy, why do I keep thinking that I was here last night on the rug in front of the fire, lying down naked with you in my arms, kissing you, begging you to make love to me, when I know it had to be a dream? And why do I think your father was here, when I know he died six months after the war?_ Or maybe it had been, _All right, Malfoy; so you never loved Astoria, but I saw that picture of Marie, and why does she look just like a Greengrass older sister?_ Or at the very least, she was quite, quite sure that the question must have been, _Are you really going to tell me that you knew all along about the way I sneaked out into the living room when you were asleep on this very couch last year and shamelessly molested you, or was it a load of shite and you actually found out the truth through some sneaky mind-meld technique?_ But she couldn't quite seem to ask anything, somehow, when Draco turned that smile on her. He handed her the firewhiskey, still smiling, and held it up to her mouth, giving her a long drink, and everything went all fuzzy again. _I don't think that Sobriety charm's working at all. Where's my wand, anyway? It really would've helped._

When Ginny attempted to piece everything together, later, she decided that Draco must have changed the subject after that and asked her about Harry, although the beginning of it all was just impossible to really remember.

"He always kissed like some sort of dead fish that had been in the refrigerator for about three days," she said solemnly.

"I'm not surprised in the least," said Draco.

"I'm so glad I never shagged him."

"So am I."

"And then after Harry, none of my other attempts ever seemed to work out," mused Ginny. "I'm not at all sure why. Do you think it actually was a curse?"

"_Was_?" Draco asked sharply. "Or still is?"

"Still is, I suppose. Is there any more firewhiskey?"

"I think you've had enough. So you've never shagged anybody at all?"

"Nope."

"I thought so. I mean, you said so earlier, but I wasn't sure. Conditions weren't exactly the best. I might've misunderstood. It's always good to get one's facts straight," Draco said with some satisfaction.

"But I'm starting to think that it may never happen," Ginny said sadly. "I always thought that I ought to wait for the right person, but maybe I really should just give up on that. I mean, if a reasonable candidate comes to hand—"

"What sort of qualities are you looking for?"

Ginny thought hard. "I think _you'd_ really be awfully good, Malfoy. That's what I've always heard. Where are you going?"

"I can't stay on this couch if you're going to say things like that right now, Weasley."

He looked as if he really might be _serious._ Ginny decided to change the subject, just for the moment. "Do you want a bit more?" she asked, passing him the bottle of firewhiskey.

"Mm-hm," said Draco. They were getting very close to the bottom now, she saw. He drank, and then peered at the bottle. "Damn. I thought I'd pass out by now. No such luck."

A swift pang of hurt moved through Ginny. "Would that be lucky?"

"Well, it would solve all of tonight's problems quite neatly, I must say," said Draco. "And it would be rather less drastic than death."

"Don't talk about that anymore!" Ginny said sharply.

"I won't. I won't. Shh, shh, Weasley, I promise I won't." One side of his mouth curved up as he looked at her. "You do care, don't you?"

"Yes," she whispered. She stared up at his face, trying desperately to decipher what she saw. _Who are you, Draco Malfoy? Why do you do these things to me? Why do you make me feel like my body just starts on fire every time you touch me, and all I want you to do is to finish what you've started but you never do, you never have, and it's agony? And why, why do I care about you at all, when I know that I shouldn't? _

Why did she remember the sixteen-year-old Draco in the portrait now, when she was looking into the real Draco's guarded, closed face? _That_ Draco had still been innocent, unable to lie or to keep any real secrets. She would have known what that Draco was really thinking. She couldn't read this one at all.

"Malfoy, why were you so glad that I never slept with anyone else?" she asked.

"Because those men don't deserve you," he said. "Not one of them ever deserved you."

"Who does, then?"

Draco gave a short, bitter laugh. "I have no idea. _I_ certainly don't know anyone good enough for you, Ginny Weasley."

Rain beat on the windows, and cold air crept through the room. Ginny shivered and moved closer to him and then closer still, until she felt one entire long lean side of his body up against hers.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," said Draco.

"Why?"

"Because you're bothering me. A lot."

She turned suddenly and pressed her breasts against his chest until the creamy-white, freckled tops showed over the satin robe, and she laid her lips against the side of his neck, sighing. He shuddered. So did she. It began as a light tremor on the surface of her skin, but within a few seconds, her bones began shivering too.

_I touched him here once, on this couch, last year,_ she remembered. _I wanted to wake him up. I wish I had. Oh, gods, I wish I had. I want… I want…_

"Now? What about now?" she asked, pressing harder, feeling sensations tugging from her nipples all the way down her chest and stomach, pooling between her legs.

"Even more. Much more. Don't _do_ that."

"But doesn't it feel…" She fumbled for words, feeling the full weight of her inexperience. "Good?"

"It feels like you're putting me through hell," said Draco, "and I would give anything to never get into heaven." He closed his eyes briefly.

"You want to ask me something," said Ginny. "What is it?"

"What about you?" Draco asked tightly. "How does it feel for you?"

"Tingly." She shifted in her seat. She didn't have words for this, and she was shaking so hard inside that she didn't know if she could use the words she knew. "My nipples are… hard. And, um, I feel a bit wet… not from the rain, I mean… well, you know what I mean… but good. Really good, but painful too. Why does it hurt so much? You're the expert, Malfoy, don't you know why?"

"Yes. I know why," said Draco, his words very clipped. "It's because you need to… to finish things. You feel arousal, but you haven't been satisfied. You need more."

"Yes. That's it. I, I want more, I _need_ more… I have to have it… Malfoy, where are you _going_?"

"Outside. Into the storm."

"No, you're not, I don't want to hear that again from you, ever—stop it!" She hooked her legs around his ankles so that he fell back between her thighs, and she felt his weight on her for just a second, his entire body pinning her down; it was like a drop of water on her parched lips after she'd been crawling through the desert for days on end. He reared up and scrambled back on the couch. She scooted forward, the green silk robe riding up around her thighs.

"Fuck, why did you have to wear that thing?" he groaned.

"It was all I could find. All the other lingerie was worse, I wasn't going to come out in front of you wearing any of it," said Ginny, because he'd asked her, and she had to give an honest answer. "And Malfoy, if you go out there and freeze to death I'll kill you!"

"I can't… I can't do this," groaned Draco, trembling so violently that she could feel him all along her skin. "Weasley, you just don't know—"

"Yes, I do!" Ginny got up on her knees and backed Draco to the end of the couch. The evil information-gathering plot seemed very faint and far away; the blood was thrumming in her veins and the room was swimming and her mouth had gone dry and she _needed_ him, needed something from him, needed it desperately, as if all the nights that she'd almost had him had gathered themselves into one and shook right on the verge of exploding . "Don't you want this? Don't you want _me_?"

"What kind of fucking _question_ is that? Of _course_ I want it—and you—" He broke off.

"Then why don't you take me? I mean it, I'm _offering_, you can have-"

"I don't even know where to start! I don't take advantage of drunk girls. Weren't you paying attention to anything I told you this morning? I didn't do it last night. I won't do it now. And even if you weren't, I couldn't do it now… not now, not when it isn't safe, not when _I'm_ not safe, not for you. I shouldn't even be here. I shouldn't spend these hours with you at all, but I want them, and you're letting me, so I'll take them. I'm dangerous to you, and I'm so fucking self—"

"Shut up," Ginny said passionately, dropping back to her heels. "I already know you're selfish, Malfoy. I've known that since the day I met you when you were twelve years old, but I don't want to hear this shite! I don't think you're dangerous at all." She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "You can't forgive me for last year—is that it? Is that what this really is?"

He stared at her. "Of course it's not. What the fuck are you talking about?"

"You know perfectly well," said Ginny. "What I did that night was just awful and I know it, and you'll never let me forget it now, and you'll never forgive me, and you want to have _posters_ made of how I sneaked into the living room and molested you on this _couch_ and put them up at Flourish and Blotts and—" She had started to cry and she knew it, but she couldn't seem to stop; the horrible frustration running through her body wouldn't let her stop and he didn't want her and she grabbed the firewhiskey and drained the bottle even though he was trying to pull it out of her hand, because what did it matter anyway, and the room started spinning round and round and round all over again.

"No, no, no, I swear, I'm not angry about it, _no_," Draco was saying, and he held her in his arms even though she was still crying and struggling to get away. "Shh. Shh. I never would've told you if it weren't for this damn _in vino veritas_ spell, don't you know that? But you asked, and so I had to. Shh. It's all right. I'm not angry about it; I never was."

"Really?" Ginny asked, her voice trembling. She could feel herself calming just a little, a very little.

"Really. At first it was like a dream, honestly. Then I woke up more and more and started to realize what was going on, and by that time you were almost… ah… done," said Draco.

_And you said Marie's name,_ thought Ginny, but that thought was very faint and fleeting. She wanted to ask about that, but she couldn't. "What did you do after I left?" she asked instead.

Draco cleared his throat. "Oh shite, I wish you hadn't asked that. I wanked off, of course."

Ginny's throat caught in a sob as the picture forced itself on her mind, and then another sob and another. "This _hurts_. It really does. Malfoy, what's going on? I've never felt like this before…"

"I don't _know_," he said, and now, she thought, he really did sound almost angry.

She raised her face to his. "Do you feel it too?"

He hesitated, and then nodded. "I have more control. That's all."

"It started when I was trying to figure out why I cared…" she murmured.

Draco gave a long, long sigh, and Ginny felt his arms trying to push her away. He didn't seem to be trying very hard. "We can't do this,' he repeated. "I meant what I said. I'm dangerous to you."

She looked straight into his eyes. "Do you _know_ that? Do you know it for a fact? Can you swear that you are one hundred percent sure?"

He chewed on his lower lip. "No. I suppose that… that I really can't, not fully, not right now," he said, very slowly. "But still—"

Ginny laid her hand on his arm, gritting her teeth; even that light contact burned and itched and stung her skin. "Malfoy, if you honestly don't know, then maybe everything's going to be all right."

He looked uncertain. She ran her fingers up his arm. "I—uh—" he began. She laid her hand on his shoulder.

"Weasley, you really need to stop that." He grabbed her hand with his; she'd reached his upper chest by now. "Touching me is a different sort of danger, that's all. You're betting that I have enough control. But I've already told you how weak I am."

She pulled her hand back, trying to breathe again. _What sort of danger are you afraid of? What do you think is going to happen to me?_ Fuck, why couldn't she just ask the questions? But she couldn't, and whenever she tried to even ask _why_ she couldn't, her mind seemed to go all fuzzy. "Are you afraid something bad is going to happen to me here?" she finally was able to ask.

"Yes. You could say that," said Draco.

"But I was outside on my own a couple of hours ago," Ginny pointed out. "In the storm. It must have been for at least half an hour. If anything awful was going to happen, don't you think that it would have been then?"

Draco looked at her thoughtfully. "You could be right about that part, I suppose. It's at least possible. But there are different sorts of danger."

"Things could turn out all right," said Ginny. "We could get back to London tomorrow, and you'll prove that nothing happened, and the Ministry won't be able to make any charges stick."

"That's the least of my worries," said Draco. "I just never thought that things would get this far… and that you'd be involved. I never thought he'd escape. I never thought _he'd_ go so far. I never meant for any of that to happen."

"What?" asked Ginny, confused.

"Nothing, nothing," murmured Draco, very softly. "Fuck. This spell does make it bloody hard to keep my mouth shut, sometimes." He took her in his arms and stroked her upper back, her arms, her neck. "Forget about it, Weasley."

"I don't understand," said Ginny, although even his very light touch had set her skin on fire and she'd barely heard a word he'd said.

"Shh. There's nothing to understand," said Draco. He moved his hands around to the front and carefully cupped her breasts. She gave a violent shiver.

"Oh! Malfoy, I just don't understand anything that's happened tonight," Ginny persisted. "It doesn't make any sense at all. I don't even know why we're here in the first place—I meant to ask about that, but every time I try, it's as if my tongue doesn't quite want to work-"

"Good, the spell from last night's holding then. Shite! It's too easy to get distracted just now… Shh," Draco repeated. His fingers moved up and up and firmly pinched her nipples between them. Ginny's back arched and she pushed her breasts forward, into Draco's hands.

"Last night! What do you mean? _What_ spell?"

His hands closed around her breasts, and he groaned softly. "Confundus and a Memory charm, of course. I couldn't let you remember what happened, I couldn't let you ask the wrong questions later on… oh, _fuck!_"

_- she had been outside, Draco had found her, he had taken her in here, he had lain her down in front of the fire, on the rug, he had stripped off her wet clothes after she had begged him to do it, and then.. and then…_

Stop it, Ginny, you have to stop this immediately, he groaned, but he wasn't pushing her away now. You're in terrible danger. We have to leave as soon as we possibly can. And sweet Merlin, you were just almost kidnapped—uh—I mean, you had a horrible nightmare about it, how can you even think this sort of thing—

But that's why, she said desperately. Don't you understand? I have to make the nightmare go away. Please, Draco, please… make me forget…

We can't do this, he said. We can't. We just can't. We absolutely can't.  


"I was here, last night," Ginny said slowly.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Draco. "You were asleep in my flat in London. Remember?"

"No. I was here, in this cottage. On that rug," she said.

He shook his head, closing his hands around her breasts, and at the feel of his fingers on her nipples again, Ginny felt all the blood rush to her head. The entire room was growing hazy and she could barely even open her mouth to speak, but she did. "No," she gasped, forcing herself to pull back. "No. I want to know, Malfoy. I have to know what's really going on. I _was_ here, and you lied to me about it this morning, back when you could still lie! Oh yes you did. Why did you? Can't you answer me?" She glared up at him.

He looked back down at her. "I can," he said, "but I won't. Fuck, I hate having to do this. I really do, Ginny. You'll never know how much. I hated it last night, and I hate it now. But there's no other way."

Ginny's eyes widened. "You've never called me by my first name before," she said stupidly.

"I did last night, but you don't remember it," said Draco. "You might as well call me by mine as well. You won't remember that either."

His voice had dropped into a lower register, dark and precise and clipped, and his face settled into frighteningly sharp lines and edges. The mask had dropped, thought Ginny. _This was Draco Malfoy's real face all along. I know that now._

The room had been chilly before, but the temperature suddenly seemed to have fallen twenty degrees. Or maybe that was just the surface of her skin. All of the warmth was gone. His icy gray eyes pinioned her in place, and she couldn't force her frozen muscles to move at all.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice horribly high.

"I'm keeping you safe," Draco said almost tenderly, and then he picked up his wand from the table in one swift, smooth motion. At that brief break in eye contact Ginny scrambled back to the end of the couch, clutching the robe around herself.

_Oh, gods, where's my wand? In my cloak. I can't reach it. I'll never even get off the couch! He's coming after me. Oh, fuck, what have I done…_

"Don't," she moaned, as Draco came closer and closer to her, crawling on all fours, as graceful and sinister as a hunting cat, his wand held out in front of him. "Oh, don't—"

"You shouldn't have been so curious, Weasley," he said, trapping her against the very end of the couch. She gave a sob of terror.

"Shh," Draco said a third time, putting a hand over her mouth. "I'm not going to hurt you. Just sit still—"

She bit him.

His face tightened even further. "You shouldn't have done that, Ginny."

No, she thought. She probably shouldn't have, but she already knew that it wouldn't keep her from doing it again, or from fighting back any way she could. She flung her arms up over her head, and when Draco came at her, she tried to hit him. His big hands tightened on her wrists and shoved her back, slamming her body against the couch, knocking the breath out of her. "Shut it!" he hissed.

She began to scream again. His hand came down punishingly hard, but she didn't bite him this time; she was struggling desperately to get away from him. He swore harshly and pinioned both of her wrists above her head with his other hand. She started to kick his shins, and he shoved his hips forward to pin her against the couch. She struggled back and to the side, and because all of his force and weight were against her, he slipped. One of his knees bumped against hers, and her legs parted as they both slithered to the floor. He fell against her, half on top of her, and then froze.

Ginny had frozen into place at the same moment he had, and she hardly dared to breathe. She could _feel_ him, his heart hammering against hers, the long lean muscles of his thighs pressed firmly against her legs, his strong corded arms straining as he pinned her hands to the floor, and—and _oh gods_. He wasn't just angry. He was aroused. _Very_ aroused. He'd taken off those wet shorts, and she was still wearing those damn crotchless knickers. If she reached out and pulled the silk robe away, there would be nothing at all between them. He had fallen into the cradle made by her spread legs, into the perfect position. And she could feel how ready she was for him, shamefully ready even in her awful fear, her breath short, every inch of skin on her body tingling, her nipples rock-hard, and still wet with all of the excitement and eagerness she'd felt before.

_I want him,_ she thought despairingly. _No matter how many lies he'd told me, no matter what he's done, no matter what's really happened here, I would let Draco Malfoy fuck me on the floor of this room right now. Oh, gods, what's happened to me? Have I just gone completely mad?_

The muscles of his arms tightened. She closed her eyes. If he was reaching out to pull the robe away, she knew that she wouldn't stop him.

But Draco was pushing himself up and off of her, instead. He sat up against the couch with his elbows on his knees and looked into the fire. She reached out to touch his shoulder, tentatively. He picked her hand up and pushed it away.

"I swore to protect you, Ginny," he said. "I meant it. And I'll protect you from myself, as well. I'm not doing a very good job so far."


	20. Ginny, Meet Draco's Dark Side

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: cuddlebear992 and TuesdayNovember, who, um, clearly must be psychic in a few ways. TN, have you thought about starting a 1-900 Psychic Friends Network? ;) Anyway, I'm updating faster because I'd like to catch the ffnet version up more with the FIA version.

This chapter and the next are NOT exactly the same as the originals, because, well, ffnet isn't really supposed to have NC-17 content, and you never know when you might get into trouble. So, a head's up on that. Also, Draco starts to show his dark side here. Y'all have been warned.

+++

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

- _Oscar Wilde_

"Draco, I—" She tried to turn his head to hers, not knowing what she was going to say. It was impossible. He held his neck completely rigid. She hugged her own knees with her arms, trying not to cry, hating the way she felt, wanting to hate _him_, hating the fact that she couldn't. She tried again. "I…" But there was nothing to say, really.

"Tell me what you're thinking, Ginny," said Draco's iron-hard voice. It was an order. She had no choice but to obey it.

"I'm thinking that I didn't want you to stop," she said helplessly. "I'm thinking that I wouldn't have even tried to make you stop, no matter what. So if you're going to ask if I would've let you go all the way and have sex with me, then yes, the answer's yes! But _why,_ Draco, why? That's what I don't understand. I've had loads of chances to do it before, and I've been pressured so much, so many times... oh, so many boys have tried. So many men. And I've always been able to resist. It's just never… felt right before."

Draco laughed humorlessly. "You're saying that _this_ feels right? That's the word you'd use?"

"No," Ginny admitted. "It couldn't feel more wrong than it does, but I still want it more than I've ever wanted anything. And I don't know why. _You_ must know. It's part of a spell or something, isn't it?" He shook his head. "Don't you dare lie to me, Draco," she said. "Just admit to whatever you've done. I won't show you any mercy. I'll keep this up until you're writhing on the floor in front of me and you have back problems the rest of your life!"

"Don't bother, because I can't explain it," he said. "You don't know how much I wish I could. But I can't. I don't know what the answer is. I'd like to believe that it's all due to my astonishing attractiveness and physical skills—"

"I don't need that spell after all," Ginny said grimly, and she drew back her hand to slap him. He caught it in mid-air. She cried out from the heat in his skin that sizzled against her every nerve, but he forced her to hold onto his fingers for a second before dropping her hand.

"But I can't chalk it all up to that. I don't understand it. Ginny, it's as if we've been lovers before, as if we've known each other in this way before-" He broke off. "And we can't have been, can't have done. It isn't possible."

He was telling the truth, Ginny thought, her heart sinking. He really _didn't_ know why. "All right," she said. "Just tell me this much. I was here last night with you, wasn't I?"

"You were here," he said.

"I knew it. I just knew! You kept on talking all that shite about Astoria so I'd be distracted, so I wouldn't even try to ask you any questions. Didn't you?"

"She was a bit of a red herring," he admitted. "Astoria is irritating as hell, but she's not really very important. I don't think so, anyway. I can handle her. And yes, talking about her kept you nicely entertained."

"Oh! So you _lied_ to me—"

"I did it to protect you," he said, and she wondered dizzily how his eyes could seem to burn and freeze at the same time. "I couldn't let you remember anything that happened when you were here, Ginny."

"But you're going to tell me now," she said. "I know enough now to ask the right questions. You can't keep from telling me now."  
Draco gave her a long, measured look in return. "I suppose I can't. And I've wanted to tell you. I don't like lying to you. I'm not sure why. I've had to lie to so many people, after all. Ask what you want to ask, Ginny."

"Lucius Malfoy isn't dead, is he?"

"No. My father's alive, but he's completely mad. He has been since right after the war." He held up a hand. "And if I could ask you for one thing, Ginny, just one thing, then don't ask me the reason why." She nodded. "He wants to get hold of you," Draco went on. "That's what he tried to do last night, and he almost succeeded. I wonder if you have any idea why."

She tried to remember. "He said something about how you were going to… oh, gods, he wanted you to use my body for something. It sounded awful."

"It couldn't be worse," said Draco. "But I didn't know how bad it really was now until I learned that he'd escaped. I didn't see that until I came here, Ginny."

"Should I thank you, then?" she asked, her mind whirling. "For stopping him? For rescuing me? Isn't that what you did?"

"I suppose it is. But don't be so quick to thank me yet," said Draco, an odd, bitter smile on his face. "If it weren't for me, my father never would have even thought of targeting you. He chose you as my reward a long time ago, you see, and he convinced the Dark Lord that that's exactly what you should be. If I'd succeeded in killing Dumbledore, that's what you would have been. _Years_ ago, Ginny. When we were both still at Hogwarts. And even after there wasn't any Dark Lord anymore, even after the war was over and there weren't any Death Eaters or any cause of pureblood purity, my father never gave up. He's the only one who never did. I just…" He shook. "I thought it was over, but it was never really over. I never thought he'd escape now, but he did. Do you understand, now, why I've got to protect you from him?"

"Yes," she said, because even though she didn't know if she understood anything else, she did understand that.

"I think I've figured out the way to do it," said Draco. "He simply can't be allowed to escape, ever again. But there's a complication. On top of everything else, I have to trust someone to keep her mouth shut about it, and she isn't very trustworthy, to say the least. "

The puzzle pieces fell into place. "Astoria," she said. "That's who you have to trust. She knows, that your father got out, and she's threatening to tell the Aurors. That's right, isn't it?"

Draco nodded. He didn't look the least bit surprised, she thought. "I suppose I should have known that you'd piece it together."

"But then Harry will have all the proof he wants to throw you in Azkaban! That'll be more than enough for him to convince everyone else that he was right—oh, Draco, and Astoria got away, what are you going to _do_-"

"Don't worry about that. I told you, Ginny; I can handle her." His eyes were very cold.

"Are you going to—to do anything to her?"

Draco shook his head. "I don't want her blood on my hands. She's not worth it, and there are other ways. The Greengrasses are a very old landed family, but they're remarkably cash-poor. I've agreed to make a considerable settlement on her if she'll just keep quiet. No, I'm not terribly concerned over Astoria."

"Then what are you so concerned about, Draco? You say that your father's back in captivity again."

"I might as well tell you now, I suppose. You won't—well, never mind." He looked into the dancing flames. "I don't know _how_ he got out. I don't understand it. He never should have been able to do it, and if he did it once, I don't know how to stop him doing it again."

"It's only that you don't know yet," said Ginny. "You'll find a way, Draco. You'll figure it out, and now that I know what's really going on, I can help you."

He gave her the odd smile again. "You're so hopeful, Ginny. You almost succeed in making me believe that everything really might come right, in the end."

"I'm hopeful, not unrealistic," said Ginny. "I still think that you're underestimating Astoria."

"I'm not. I told you that I can handle her."

"What makes you so sure about that? "

Draco shrugged. "I've done it before."

"What do you mean?"

"In the past. It's not important now."He turned and pushed a lock of hair back behind her ear. His face was harsh and set and impossibly beautiful in the firelight. The brush of his fingers against her cheekbones set her skin burning. She shifted position again, feeling the gnawing empty pain inside, knowing that he was watching her keenly.

"That hurts you, doesn't it?" he asked.

"_Yes!_" she burst out. She didn't know what to feel for him now, and she couldn't begin to sort out what she did feel; all she could be sure of was that he had wound her up and then left her hanging, and that he _could_ make the agony go away but wouldn't. "Look, I still want to know what you meant by what you said about Astoria, and what you did in the past—"

"It's really not important." He smoothed his hands along her upper back and shoulders.

Her eyes narrowed. "Are you just trying to distract me?"

"No," he said. "I'm not."

"Do you mean…" She made a helpless gesture with her hands. "Then do you mean that you feel this, too?"

Draco was silent for a few seconds. "Yes," he finally said. "You don't understand how much."

"Then you've got to do something." She turned to him, despising the admission more than anything. "Draco, _do_ something! I feel like I'm about to die if you just leave me like this!"

"_Don't_," he said, in his harshest voice she'd heard from him yet. "Ginny, you don't know what it's like for me to hear that. You can't understand—"

"You think I don't understand?" she snapped back, feeling another rush of desperate craving from her head to her nipples to her hips and throughout her entire lower body.

"I suppose you do. But we _can't_, Ginny, we can't."

"But isn't there anything else you can do for me, Draco? I mean, I've never actually _done_ anything… but I've still talked about things, and heard things, and there has to be something. Couldn't you touch me, or-"

She heard his swift intake of breath. "Of course there are other things we could do, Ginny. But you're giving my self-control a great deal of credit. More than it deserves, especially because you're so willing to allow me to do anything I want, Loki only knows _why_. You wouldn't stop me if I went past touching and tasting, would you?"

Mutely, she shook her head.

Draco smiled bitterly. That cold, hard face looked so strange when he smiled, Ginny thought, but still no less beautiful. More so, actually. "So you trust that I'd be strong enough to stop myself, and you're putting much more trust in me than you should."

Ginny looked into the weak flames in the fireplace. "I do trust you," she said.

"Why the hell do you?" he asked. "You know that I've lied to you now."

"I don't want to trust you at all!" Ginny struggled to put her feelings into words. "I don't trust you to tell the truth to me, because you're finding ways to keep from doing it, even with this spell. But I do trust that you wouldn't do anything more to me than touch me."

"Yeah, well, you shouldn't even trust me with that."

He was right, and she knew it. She shouldn't trust Draco Malfoy as far as she could throw him with a dragon tied on. She knew, now, that he'd lied to her. And yet she did trust him, even as she hated the fact that she did, and almost hated herself for doing it. "Help me, Draco," she said, struggling to keep her voice even. "You just have to. Help me, and—and I'll help you." She put a hand on his chest. He pushed her away.

'Fuck! Don't you understand? I can't resist you. I thought I could, but I can't, and it's getting worse by the minute. I can't touch you without wanting you, and Ginny, you can't trust me not take everything from you."

"But you wouldn't. Would you? If you just answer me you can't lie and then we'd both know and—"

"No," said Draco. "Do you really not understand? There's nothing you could say or do that could ever get the truth out of me. "

"_Why_? Is it because you're a Malfoy, and all Malfoys ever do is lie?"

He laughed humorlessly. "I don't even know what the truth is myself, Ginny. I never have. Sometimes I think I never will. But, yes. Yes. We're born to be liars, the Malfoys, all of us, every one. And we always have been. My grandfather. My father. Me."

She wiped away her tears, angrily, and she looked up at him, ready to hurl more accusations, to pour out more arguments. But then she stopped. There was something in his eyes. She didn't know what it was, but she'd _seen_ it before. _Where? How? When?_ Last night, she realized. It had been on the Cobb, when he'd found her with his father, when he'd taken her back to the cottage. Ginny didn't remember anything clearly and she had a feeling she never would, but she did remember that look, because it had been in Lucius Malfoy's eyes, and it had also been in Draco's.  
_  
He's d-d-dead, she said. He can't have t-t-touched me. He's d-d-dead._

Of course he is, said Draco. Of course he couldn't have. You know that nothing he might have said to you was true or real, don't you? It was all part of the nightmare, wasn't it?

Of c-c-course.

So you'll forget it all, won't you?  
  
"Your father said things to you tonight, Draco, didn't he?" she whispered. "About me?"

Draco hesitated for a long time. When he started to speak, she didn't think that he was answering her question at all at first. "You started to figure in my father's plans when I was about fifteen years old. He simply… reminded me of the place you'd held. The one you continued to hold." His mouth twisted. "First, he tried to convince me that you'd already let Potter at you. Where the hell did you think I got that idea from, anyway? And just think of how easily I believed it."

"But now you know it isn't true," said Ginny. The insane physical craving for him had receded a bit, and she could think again; she chose her words with great care. "Draco, I know what it's like to hear darkness whispering relentlessly in your ear when you're very young, and to feel like you'll never, never get that voice out of your head again, but you can do it."

He shook his head. "You can't know what it's like, Ginny.'

_Draco doesn't know about me and the Chamber of Secrets,_ Ginny realized. _Lucius Malfoy must've never told him. So he doesn't have any idea. He doesn't know that he's wrong about me there. And I don't want him to know. _"Never mind that," she said hurriedly. "Believe me, Draco, you _can_ do it. You're _not_ your father. You saved me from him, you rescued me, don't you see how different you are?"

"No," said Draco. "I don't see, because you don't know the worst yet, Ginny. My father was kind enough to jog my memory about his original plans to use you as my reward during that last year before the war."

Ginny shivered. "But that doesn't make any difference. Draco, you didn't take me then, you didn't even want to do it."

Draco paused, and then he spoke very deliberately. "No, Ginny, that isn't true. I did want to take you. Very much. I did want you sent to me then. I wanted it so much that I could hardly endure it. I came _so_ damn close to begging Father to bring you to me, more times than I can count. And he would have done it. He would have convinced the Dark Lord that I ought to have you, even though I'd failed at my task and I hadn't killed Dumbledore. You'll never know how narrowly you escaped being delivered to my rooms at Malfoy Manor that last summer before the war, when you were still sixteen years old and thought you were in love with Harry Potter and hated me like poison. Didn't know any of that, did you? I never, never, ever wanted to tell you."

"Oh gods," whispered Ginny.

"You thought the _in vino veritas_ spell sounded like such a grand idea a bit earlier," asked Draco. "How's it working out for you now, Ginny?"

She couldn't speak. She couldn't answer him.

"Would you like to know exactly how my father planned for it to go? You don't know anywhere near as much about it as you think. During that last year, he had so many things on his mind. I was a bit of a disappointment to him then. I don't think I was figuring very prominently into his schemes, except in this one way. He didn't even make much of an attempt to save my life after I was trapped in Hogwarts during the last battle; my mother was the only one who fought for me—you didn't know that? No? Well, anyway, I was forced to listen to his mad plans by the hour, more times than I could ever count. You were to be used as pureblood breeding stock, and that's the part I haven't told you before- I'd really like you to listen, Ginny; I think you ought to know all about this." He bent down to her as she tried to back away from him, his face and eyes very cold and level.

"Would you like to hear what he wanted me to do? I suppose not, but you're going to find out anyway. _I_ certainly had to hear about it often enough. My father figured out the central truth, you see, which was that the Dark Lord couldn't possibly win. He already knew this before the final battle. So he laid his own plans. I was to kidnap you directly after the war, no more than a week or two later, and imprison you at one of the Malfoy properties, either at Malfoy Manor or in Cornwall or here, I suppose. Stop trying to get away from me, Ginny. There's nowhere to go. First, you'd be examined by medi-elves to make sure you were still a virgin, so that the Malfoy line would remain pure and untainted. And then I, as the official Malfoy stud, would be allowed to mount the pureblood bitch—that's you. I seriously wonder if our first time would be observed by official witnesses to make sure I performed satisfactorily. Apparently that's how the Malfoy wedding night was conducted in the eleventh century, not that we'd be married, of course. Then, I was supposed to lock you in a room and visit you only for breeding purposes, where I'd force myself on you no matter how loudly you screamed, or how desperately you begged to be let alone. You'd be forced to bear my sons. Daughters wouldn't count. I'd be allowed and expected to take my pleasure elsewhere, of course, while you were locked away in a bedroom, pregnant with the Malfoy offspring, and quietly—or more likely, not so quietly—going mad. Nobody would ever know you were there."

"But I already _knew_ that your father's insane!" she burst out. "Oh, gods, why are you telling me all of this, Draco? It can't make any difference now—"

"Oh, it can." He smiled coldly at her. "When my father outlined his obsession in detail for me again tonight—just in case I'd forgotten any part of it, very kind of him, wasn't it?—I remembered how lonely I was that summer, and how desperately I wanted you. And I remembered something I'd locked neatly away in a little compartment of my mind. I can do that, you know. I've always been able to do it. There were moments—just fleeting moments, nothing more—when a thought would flash across my mind. _If that's the only way I can ever have Ginny Weasley, then that's how I'll get her._"

He reached down and pried her hands away from her face. "Don't think that I ever meant that I would have been content as a pawn in my father's mad schemes. I was never truly tempted for a moment to do that to you, what my father wanted. But one idea really did tempt me, sometimes, in the darkest part of the night, in those weeks just before the end of the war. Do you want to know what it was?"

Mutely, she nodded.

"I thought about letting my father bring you to me, all right," said Draco. "I'd play the part I had to play in public, and I'd teach you to do the same. But behind closed doors, oh, Ginny, it would have been a different story. I'd be kind, and gentle. I'll bet you never would have believed I could be either of those things when I was a cruel and frightened teenager, did you? But I could have been, for you." He brushed a curl of her hair against her lips. "I never would have forced you. I'd have just refused the publicly-witnessed-consummation-night rubbish, if it came to that. We could have pretended we'd consummated the bond when they wanted us to, I'd have taught you to cower before me whenever we had to appear before my father and act like my obedient sex slave, but in private, Ginny, I would have allowed you all the time you needed to grow used to me. I'd have kept you safe in my rooms, and visited you, and brought you your favorite foods and books and games. I could've even arranged for you to go outside, into the rose garden. And you would have given yourself to me willingly, in time. Wouldn't you?'

The truth came to her in a rush. Yes. In some dark, unexamined part of her mind, Ginny knew that she would have done. She imagined herself carried away by a spell to Malfoy Manor, terrified, rebellious, fighting desperately. Draco Malfoy would be the only one who was kind, gentle, and soothing when she'd expected him to be the worst of all. He would have protected her, even as she hated him and fought him at first. He would have kept her safe in his rooms, in his bed, even though she probably would have tried to escape. But Ginny thought that she only would have tried to do that once. She knew what he hadn't said—that eventually, his father would have wanted proof that his plan had worked, that Draco had taken her successfully and that she had submitted herself to his forceful lust, however unwillingly. She imagined Lucius Malfoy almost, _almost_ catching her, and the terror that would strike into her heart as she ran back to Draco in his rooms and fell into his arms, sobbing, and let him whisper comfortingly in her ear, and softened to him for the first time. And after that, it would have been easy. She could feel the imagined sensations in herself, the fear, the gratitude to him, the budding desire, the excitement of the dark and the forbidden, and that final time in the middle of the night while he held her when she awoke screaming from nightmares. He would touch her, and kiss her, and those kisses would set her body on fire, and then the struggle would be over, and he would win.

"Yes," she said, through clenched teeth. She would have given herself to him willingly, in time. The idea made her so angry that she could hardly see straight. But then she felt Draco nuzzling her ear, and the warm waves of weakness waving over her made it impossible for her to see anything at all.

"I would have escaped from that house when I was eighteen years old," he whispered, "with all the Malfoy money and the title, and you would've come with me, Ginny. And you would have been mine. Mine. All mine. Wouldn't you?"

"Yes," she moaned, pushing herself back into his chest. If she could have taken back the word and the action, she would have done. His hands curved up and began kneading her breasts.

"I could have heard you moan for me all the time," he said raggedly. "My father told me all the things he'd told me almost three years ago, Ginny. That's what he told me tonight. He reminded me that I could have all of it now. And I knew that I could hear you moan now. I could come back to this cottage and I could lay you down on that rug and I could make you moan for me, Ginny Weasley, I could feel you under me, I could make you scream my name as you should have screamed it _then_ and why the fuck _shouldn't_ I, you want it as much as I do!" He yanked her round to face him, roughly. "Why not, Ginny? Why not?"

Much, much later, under very different circumstances, Ginny would wonder what would have happened on that night if Draco hadn't asked her a direct question at that exact moment. She knew what the answer almost certainly was. She would have pulled the damp blankets off him; he would torn the green silk robe off her; he would have pushed her down to the floor, and then, relentlessly and irrevocably, he would have made her his. He would give her the greatest pleasure she had ever known, but he wouldn't spare her or hold back; he would be ruthless and demanding and devouring. If she chose Draco Malfoy as her first, it would be a choice she could never go back from, and she knew that she could never pretend, either to herself or to him, that it had not been her choice.

She closed her eyes, because she did know why not, and even under _in vino veritas,_ she couldn't bear to answer his questions while she was looking into his beautiful face, filled with lust and desire and… and nothing else. Yes, she was sure of it. There was nothing else there for her, in his face. No other emotion. She pushed him away. It was like pushing at a marble wall, but then, impossibly, he did move.

"Because you want me, but I know you don't care about me, Draco," she said dully. "You didn't then, and you don't now. I'm right. Aren't I?"

She desperately didn't want to be. She _desperately_ wanted to hear him tell her that she was wrong.

He dropped back to his heels. "You are right," he muttered. "I don't care about you, Ginny. Not in the way you want. Not in the way you deserve. I can't care about anyone that way. It isn't in me."

The clock on the wall ticked on and on. Each beat was like a blow against the most sensitive parts of Ginny's body. _Won't it ever end?_

"Do you finally understand what I was talking about?" asked Draco. "Do you understand why you shouldn't trust me?"

"I don't understand anything anymore," said Ginny. "But… wait."

_What would Draco Malfoy most want to keep hidden?_

Who's Marie?

She's the first woman I ever loved. 

"Wait a minute!" she exclaimed. "It _can't_ be true. You _can_ care, Draco, because you did, once." She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. "You lo—you cared about someone once. One woman, at least."

He looked away from her.

"Don't do that! You already told me anyway. You can't lie to me; don't even try!"

"Yes. I _did._ Past tense. I don't know what sort of grades you had in basic grammar class, Ginny, but you do understand that the past isn't the present?"

"But you're capable of it, you have to be. If you cared once, you can care again." Ginny's throat was closing tighter and tighter; she forced the words out of it. "You cared—you cared about _her_- you _loved_ her—" With a tremendous effort, she shoved the question through her lips. "Is that why you don't think you could ever feel that way about anybody else? Do you still love Marie?"

Silence. Silence beat through the room, broken only by the ticking of the clock, but even that had grown fearful-sounding and soft. _I said it,_ thought Ginny, appalled. _I can't believe I said it. But I did. I think I've wanted to ask that question all along. Oh, fuck, now what?_

"Yes," said Draco. "I can't lie to you. I still love Marie. I'll never stop loving her. But you don't understand."

_I understand enough,_ thought Ginny. She glanced at the front door. _I could probably get to it before he could stop me._ Running out into the storm didn't seem like the worst idea in the world, just then. She was starting to understand the appeal it had held for Draco.

He seemed to be choosing his words with great care. "I love Marie, and I always will. I hate Marie, and I always will, more than I ever imagined I could hate anyone or anything. I don't know how to sort out love from hate, Ginny, and that's why I can't care about you or anyone else, and it's all because of her. She gave me a glimmer of hope, you see. She led me to believe that my life held some sort of promise beyond the nightmare that had been planned for me. Then, she betrayed me completely and disappeared, and everything in me has been devastated ever since that day. If it weren't for Marie, I wouldn't be in this fucking mess with Astoria Greengrass, because I never would've even started up with her. My father's always had this obsession with pureblood breeding and creating a new pureblood race, but it never would have got to this point without Marie; he wouldn't have had the chance, I can see that now. You want the truth? He never would have gone mad to begin with, except for what happened with her. _I_ might have some right to care about you, if it hadn't been for Marie, and what she did to me. Or at least I'd have some reason to hope that I could have the right."

"I didn't know," Ginny whispered. It was all that she could seem to say.

"Of course you didn't," said Draco. "I've kept this a secret from everyone. And if you think I've told you everything now, well, Ginny… I don't believe you're that naïve."

" But this was in the past," Ginny somehow managed to say. "Years ago, when you were, what? Eighteen, maybe? You can leave it behind you now, even if you don't think you can. You can change. There's always hope, Draco."

He smiled faintly. "You do have a way of making me think that there could still be hope, Ginny Weasley. There might still be a chance. Yes. I like to think that. I'd like to leave that one chance open for myself." And then, before she could even begin to gather her dazed mind together into any coherent threads of action, he'd raised his wand and pointed it at her in one swift, graceful movement.

"_Benzinen!_"

Ginny looked at him, bewildered. "What on earth did you just do to me?"

"It's a Danish Petrification spell," said Draco. "Try to move, Ginny."

She did. She could do no more than wiggle her body slightly in any direction, and when she tried to edge her hips sideways, she began to fall. Draco caught her easily and lifted her onto the couch, pushing her back. The heat of his hands scorched her, and she couldn't move away from him in any direction; the small movements she was able to do only seemed to intensify the sensations. His fingers lingered on her waist, stroking the curves lightly, and there was nothing, _nothing_ she could do about it. She began to whimper. He smiled.

"Do you remember what you said last night, Ginny?"

"I don't know what you mean! I said a lot of things. Draco, listen to me, please—"

"You told me that you wanted me to make love to you, because when you were awake and yourself, you hated me. And you're right. You have every reason to hate me. More than you know, even now." His hands moved down and stroked her thighs, idly pushing the green silk robe a bit higher. "Your skin is so smooth… Don't think I've told you all my secrets, Ginny. I haven't. But you know things about me at this moment that nobody else in the world knows. It's too dangerous to allow you to keep on knowing them. 'The Confessions of Draco Malfoy…' He chuckled. "You can't be allowed to remember them, you see. So can you guess what I'm going to do?"

"You're going to wipe my memory again," said Ginny in a very small voice.

"Of course I am," said Draco. "Quite, quite thoroughly."

"It didn't work so thoroughly last time!"

He shrugged. "No Memory charm is flawless, but that was my own fault. If I don't make the same mistakes this time, it'll work quite well on you. I'd never try it on someone like Astoria, though." He leaned down and kissed the side of her neck. "Memory charms are really only effective on the pure of heart."

Ginny was shivering so hard now that she could barely speak. "Maybe that's why it didn't w-w-work so very well on me!"

Draco stopped. "What the hell are you saying to me, Ginny?"

"I'm saying that maybe I'm not as pure as you think I am!"

He turned her chin so that she faced him. His eyes were icy. "Don't say that." His voice was utterly flat and dead, and she felt every hair on the back her neck rise in terrified response. "Never say that, Ginny. You've _got_ to be pure, you've absolutely got to be- Did you lie to me about that?" he demanded.

"N-n-n-o," she said, trembling, terrified. _I can't move. I can't move one muscle more than a fraction of an inch and he's frightening me so much and he could do anything he wanted to me and I couldn't stop him, oh, shite, he was absolutely right when he kept saying how dangerous he was to me, and why the fuck didn't I listen?_ "I swear I didn't lie, Draco. I've never…done anything with anybody, I'm still a virgin." He didn't know what kind of purity she was really talking about. He didn't know about Tom Riddle and the Chamber of Secrets, and, she silently vowed, he never, ever would.

He let out a long breath, and his eyes and face and body softened again. _But that's how he really is, underneath, that hard, cold, frightening Draco. And I won't even remember it!_ Ginny thought despairingly. "You have to stay that way, don't you understand?" said Draco. "You're my one true, pure, good thing, Ginny." He stroked the side of her cheek with his hand, moving down to her neck, carefully watching her response. Then he dipped his fingers into the silk robe and ran them along the top of her breast. She made a strangled sound in her throat.

"This spell intensifies the physical feelings, doesn't it?" He kissed her collarbone. "You're so magnificently responsive, Ginny. I love that. You see…" His fingers moved down. "I'm not saying that I want you to _always_ remain pure, understand. I never intended for that to happen. But I'm reserving you for myself."

"Then why didn't you—" Ginny shut her lips tight.

"Why didn't I take you before, when you would have let me do anything I liked with you?" Draco brushed the very tips of his fingers across her nipples. Ginny sobbed. "Oh, I love hearing those sounds," he said. "Do you remember what I told you earlier about all of those fascinating separate compartments in my head? There's a part of me that wants to protect you. Then there's another part that wants to keep you for myself. There's a part that wants to save you from me, and there's a part that wants to lock you away in a dungeon and use you as my exclusive sex slave—that part isn't allowed out, which I'm sure you'll be relieved to know. There's a part that only wants to give you pleasure. That's a very large part." He rubbed back and forth, stimulating both of her nipples in turn. "You do moan so deliciously, Ginny. And there's a part of me…" He looked wistful for a moment. "A part that wishes I could care for you."

She blinked at a tear in the corner of her eye.

"Don't cry," he said tenderly, kissing the tear away. "I'm getting to a rather important part, you see, and it's an extremely large one." He kissed his way down her cheekbone and to her jaw. "It's the part that's really quite ruthless, Ginny, and that does whatever it has to do to get what it wants. And that's the part that's operating now." He reached her lips. While his words were still sinking in, he covered her mouth with his own, and finally, fully, he gave her their first kiss. It was slippery and exquisite and chocolate-flavored, and the sensations ran all the way to Ginny's toes, and she was still gasping when he pulled back.

"I'm going to cast a memory charm on you soon, Ginny."

She shook her head.

"I have to," he said. "You'll come back to yourself on this couch, in my arms, and you won't have the least fucking idea what happened between us in the last hour, except…"

Draco's hand was still under her robe. It began moving on her breasts again, playing with them. "Except that your body will be in agony from unsatisfied sexual desire," he said gently. "You'll be willing to do anything to find relief from it. And I'll agree to help you, Ginny, after a suitable amount of begging. You'll be grateful, and you'll accept my offer. I need to create a bond between us, you see. One that you can't ignore. One that you can never escape. But I can't be sure that you'd let me do those things when you return to yourself unless I prepare you properly. You know one of my secrets now. You know that I can't care, Ginny. You know that the ability's been destroyed in me, and that Marie did it. I don't have that kind of caring for you, because I'm not capable of it. But you're mine, and I'm going to mark you as mine." He tweaked her nipples.

"Oh… _ohhhh…_What will you do?" gasped Ginny. "Draco, are you going to—"

He shook his head, smiling. "You said you trusted me, Ginny. I suppose you can, when it comes to this one thing. I won't take your virginity. I swore to protect you even from myself, and I will. But…" He leaned down so that his beautiful face was only a few inches from hers. "I'm going to do things to your body that nobody has ever done. I'll know you in ways that no man has ever known you. You'll crave me so desperately that you'll let me do it, and when you come back to yourself, you won't know that I deliberately stirred up that craving by tormenting you now. Like this."

_I should've jumped up and ran out that door while I had the chance_ flashed through Ginny's mind, but it was too late, because Draco had already reached down, untied the sash at the waist of the robe, and pulled it aside. Then he knelt at her side and stared down at her, his gaze sliding up and down her completely exposed body. His hand came down very, very slowly, skimming her ankles, her knees, her thighs, her stomach, her breasts, rubbing across her nipples, and it was like a tongue of fire skipping across her skin. She struggled to get away; she couldn't help it, but she could do nothing but writhe and squirm, and _oh gods_ his hands were reaching down to part her thighs.

"Tell me to stop, Ginny, and I will," he said.

She looked up at him pleadingly.

"You can speak. Ask me to stop and I won't go any further."

_Oh, no,_ Ginny prayed. _Don't do it. Please, please don't do it. Don't ask the question!_

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No!" she cried out. "I want you to touch me!"

And he did. But not enough; not nearly enough, and she panted and cried and finally broke down, and he smiled.

"How do you feel, Ginny?"

"It's, it's, it's like being tortured," she hiccupped. "It's like being stretched on a rack! Oh, please, Draco, for gods' sake, please!"

"If I touch you more one time, Ginny, you'll come. All of that horrible tension will be released. You'll writhe and scream in relief, all of the pain will be gone. I can give that to you, Ginny. Do you want it?"

"_Yes!_" she sobbed.

"You can't have it now," said Draco.

"I hate you," she said helplessly, looking up at his cruelly perfect features, hating herself even more.

A spasm passed over his face. "Good," he said. "You're so much safer that way."

Ginny turned her head away. She knew that it didn't do any good to struggle against the invisible bonds, but she couldn't stop. "How beautiful you are," she heard Draco say, softly. He leaned close to her, and she saw that his grey eyes went unfocused. He reached down and caressed her breasts, tenderly, his fingers playing with her nipples, stimulating them to painfully hard peaks. He moistened his lips, and somehow, even through her anguish and frustration, she clearly saw the naked obsession in his eyes for the first time.

"Beautiful, Ginny," he said softly, "beautiful, and all mine, fuck, all mine. You're going to be mine. I'll find a way. You're right. Everything will work out, somehow. I never would have believed it, except for you. My one pure good true thing… _she_ wasn't pure! I thought it didn't matter, but it did. _You'll_ be pure, Ginny, and that will make all the difference. It will have to."

"Who—who wasn't pure?" she managed to gasp. "Marie?"

"Yes," Draco murmured, and his eyes were on fire. "Marie was a whore. But you're nothing like her. You're pure, and I'll take that purity from you and then I'll make up for the past. Nobody else has ever had this from you. But you'll give yourself to me, won't you, Ginny? You'll be mine. Mine to enjoy. Nobody else will ever get this from you. Only me, Ginny, only me. Now struggle again. Struggle some more! I want to see it!"

He pinched her nipples harshly, and she gasped,and she did struggle, as hard as she could. She heard him groan. He reached out suddenly and pinned down her wrists with his hands even though he didn't need to do it, the spell made it impossible for her to move more than a few millimeters in any direction, and then his mouth came down on her nipples and he _sucked_ and sucked so hard, right to the edge of pain in the most exquisite way possible, and his weight was on her naked, writhing body, and his eyes were utterly possessive and lustful, and he terrified her and she hated him and wanted him and he was _reaching down to yank that blanket off._ And in another second, he was going to be completely naked too, and it was going to happen, what she craved and feared and so much, no matter what he'd said about not taking her virginity yet, because he wanted her so much that he couldn't help it, couldn't resist her. And her body was ready, but her heart wasn't, because he'd told the truth. He didn't care about her.

"No," gasped Ginny. "No. Stop, Draco."

And he did stop.

She heard him give a long, painful sigh. He retied the robe around her waist, and he arranged the blankets around himself so that they looked the way that Ginny remembered them from an hour earlier. He ran a hand over her body, quickly, and Ginny felt her muscles loosen. She could move them again. Then Draco picked up his wand, and she closed her eyes, feeling a tear trying to squeeze out from each one. She didn't beg him not to wipe her memory again. His eyes were very, very bright, a brilliant silvery color, as if they shone with unshed tears as well. He laid his other hand on the side of her face, very briefly, and then he raised his wand.

"_Glemme_", he said.

And there might have been something that Ginny had wanted to tell him, something very, very important, maybe the most important thing in the whole world, but then forgetfulness spread across her brain from nerve to nerve and cell to cell and she couldn't remember anything at all. 


	21. And Satisfaction Brought Her Back

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: Tuesday November (no, I'm not exactly sick yet of all the nice things you say about my writing… ;) Yes, this chapter and the next are a little disturbing, and we see that DDD's Draco has a dark side. But there's a lot more to him too, and we'll also see that), Brigid K, and Sometime Selkie (Lucius and his plots involving Astoria and Ginny… I can't reveal that yet! He hasn't forgotten about Astoria, though. But he wants to use her for other purposes. And Draco even scared ME in this chapter, but don't lose faith in him yet. ;) There's so much more to come with him.), and cuddlebear992.

This chapter has been, ahem, slightly abridged to fit the standards of this archive, shall we say, although NOT as much as some later chapters will need to be. The version on FIA is the unabridged one. So here's the story about FIA vs. ff dot net. Fics are rated in different ways, from Not Naughty to Extremely Naughty, which is kind of the equivalent of an G to NC-17 rating in film. FF dot net can't use that rating system because it belongs to the Motion Picture Association of America. (To understand more about the MPAA, including its shady, sinister history, see the fascinating documentary *This Film Is Not Yet Rated.* Basically, the way in which American films are rated is very screwed up—it's really just about impossible for a film to be rated NC-17 for violence, but for sexual content, it's very very very easy. However, this isn't only about explicit sex, but about many issues related to GLBT content, African-Americans having sex, women having fun during sex, any sex-positive stuff, etc. Remarkably explicit sexual content has been passed under an R-rating, as long as it shows people not enjoying what's going on, and rape scenes have rarely been enough to get a film rated NC-17.)

Anyway, ff dot net used to accept fics with the Extremely Naughty rating. Several years ago, they stopped doing it, and they only go up to Definitely Naughty now. Fictionalley doesn't accept these fics either, and actually, most archives don't. Never mind if these fics are the dumbest porn in the world, if they are literature, if they have socially redeeming quality, whatever—they will all be rejected. Maybe the system that's used really IS like the MPAA after all. But some archives do take the Extremely Naughty fics, and FIA is one of them. Find it at www dot dracoandginny dot com. And don't forget, y'all…

FIGHT CENSORSHIP! The rights you save may be your own.

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It is not sex that gives the pleasure, but the lover.

- _Marge Piercy_

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Ginny blinked and shook her head. The room was spinning round and round and round in the fuzziest way possible. In the very middle of an exceptionally fuzzy spin, it suddenly lurched to a halt, which did nothing good for her balance.

"_Ooh,_" she moaned as her stomach gave an alarming swoop towards the floor.

"Let's not start that up again," said Draco, and she felt his warm, strong hands close firmly around her shoulders. He laid her gently back against the couch, moving with her so that she was still held within the circle of his arms. His face sharpened into focus. He was looking down at her with an amused smile.

"I must say, Weasley, that I've rarely had my ego flattered to quite that extent," he said.

"Wh-what?"

"Well, I've never seen a girl faint dead away at nothing more than the mention of my wanking off."

"You were wanking off?" she asked stupidly.

"Not right this _second._ I'm talking about what happened a year ago, on this very couch," said Draco. "Of course, I'm not going to claim that I haven't wanked off since then, because I have, rather often, but you didn't exactly ask me about that."

"Malfoy, what the hell are you talking about?"

He laid his hand on her forehead. "Are you sure you didn't bump your head when you fell?"

"Fell?" repeated Ginny. His hand was hot. Burning hot. His fingers were sending tendrils of flame through her flesh.

"Funny, I wouldn't have thought that this room was nearly large enough for an echo," said Draco. "You fell off the couch onto the floor. Don't you remember?"

"I.. yes… no.. not really. I don't know!" Ginny looked up at him pleadingly. "Malfoy, what were we talking about before it happened?"

"Ah…"

"Tell me!" She smacked his chest with a fist. He enclosed her hand in his own. Ginny gasped. His skin was on _fire!_

"You were, ah, holding forth on your interesting theory that I'd seriously planned to create posters of the time you so charmingly molested me last year, and then to share them with your coworkers at Flourish and Blotts. I was attempting to soothe you by sharing the fact that I hadn't even realized you were… ahem… physically satisfying yourself and using me as a prop until you'd nearly completed the process."

"Oh no." Ginny let her head fall back against the couch. He moved closer.

"That's when I added the information that I'd found it necessary that night to… shall we say… effect my own physical release upon your abrupt departure," said Draco. He paused discreetly. "You became rather worked up after that, Weasley."

Ginny's mind rapidly assembled various scenarios, each worse than the last. She'd tried to hit Draco, missed, and fell off the couch. She'd launched herself at Draco in an attempt to strangle him, succeeded, and fell off the couch. She'd kissed Draco and then dragged _both_ of them off the couch.

"Perhaps it's better not to explain exactly what happened next," said Draco.

"Please don't," mumbled Ginny. "I don't want to know. I never want to know."

"Then I won't tell you," Draco said softly.

"Thank you."

"Oh, no thanks are necessary, Weasley," he said. His voice was very light, but when she looked at him quickly, she saw a strange expression. It flashed across his entire face, in fact, but then it disappeared so fast that she couldn't make any sense of it, whatever it had been.

Ginny smiled at him uncertainly. "I just wish I could remember," she said, more than half to herself. "Exactly what was going on right before I fell, I mean. Everything's a bit confusing. More than a bit."

"You put a wandless Sobering spell on yourself earlier, didn't you?" asked Draco.

"Yes," she admitted.

Draco shook his head and shook his finger at her in mock disappointment. "Really, Weasley. You're much more clever than that. Those sorts of spells are hideously unreliable; you'd almost have been better off doing nothing at all."

"You might be right, Malfoy," sighed Ginny. "I mean, I just don't remember almost anything clearly."

"Really? Nothing at all?" asked Draco, rubbing her upper back and shoulders.

"Uh…" said Ginny. His hands were tracing patterns of fire on her skin. His fingers were innocently touching areas that he could have touched in front of her entire family and everyone else she'd ever known, but they were drawing lines of flame down her breasts and stomach and thighs. _She_ was on fire. _Oh, gods!_ "Uh, you were telling me about Astoria. It was so funny, but she followed you here, and she worries me, I think you're underestimating her and what she might try to do—"

His hands stilled. "How do you know she followed me?"

"Um…" Ginny tried to think. It felt like a completely lost cause. "I don't know. It seems like common sense, I suppose. I know you told her that you didn't want to marry her and if I were her I'd follow you and try to get you to change your mind and—" She sucked in her breath. The fingers were drawing little spirals on her spine now. Each one burned.

"That's right, Weasley," said Draco. "You're so clever. That's exactly why Astoria was here. I told her to bloody well clear off, and she did. So don't worry about her. Now, what else were you talking about?" His fingers went up and down, up and down, tracing the fan-shaped curve of her back.

"I—ah—I don't know—Malfoy, what are you doing—"

"Reminding you." Each of the little strokes of his fingers tugged firmly between her legs.

"But I don't remember!" _How can this be happening?_ Ginny wondered in horror.

"Are you sure?" Draco asked. There was _definitely_ a teasing note in his voice. Could he possibly know?

"I—no—" This was impossible. But it _was_ happening… wasn't it?

"Are you _positive_?"

"I think so—" Yes. It was, Ginny realized incredulously.

"All right, then." Draco stilled his hands completely. "I can see that I'll have to remind you. And my goodness, but what an interesting noise you've just made."

Ginny couldn't stop the stifled little sob in her throat, although she would have given a lot if she could have done. If he'd kept it up for even another minute or two—no, another thirty seconds- she would have shuddered in his arms, writhing in that damn green silk robe on that couch, and he'd _certainly_ know exactly what had happened to her. _Oh, dear gods!_

"You were saying that Potter kissed like some sort of dead fish that had been in the refrigerator for about three days, and that you were glad you'd never shagged him. That you'd never shagged anybody, in fact. That you believed you were under some sort of no-sex curse. How unfortunate for you, Weasley. Why are you wriggling about like that?"

"Let me off this couch, Malfoy," Ginny said through gritted teeth.

"I don't think so," said Draco. "You're finally converted me to your point of view, you see. Running out into the rain dressed in nothing more than a silk robe would be completely irresponsible; you'd probably catch your death of cold. What a waste that would be. Do stop wriggling. I'm not letting you get away. I don't think that those black lace knickers will help you keep any warmer, either. Do all Weasleys blush that shade of red?"

"Let me _go_, Malfoy!"

"I can see that it's my duty to save you from yourself," Draco said, in what sounded like a very regretful tone of voice. He pinioned both of her wrists against the couch with one of his hands. She struggled against him, but she couldn't move in the slightest. He held her down easily. _I can't get away from him,_ Ginny realized. Said realization plummeted down between her thighs, throbbing.

"Anyway, I'm far from done reminding you of all of the interesting information you saw fit to impart to me, Weasley," said Draco. "Next, you expressed your opinion that this no-sex curse might never be broken, and that perhaps you ought to lower your standards and accept any reasonable candidate that came to hand. I asked which qualities such a candidate might possess. You were then kind enough to state that you'd heard _I_ might fit the job description. Very amiable of you. True, this might be seen as perhaps less than a compliment, considering the comment you'd made about lowering you standards—"

"Let go of me!" screeched Ginny, writhing in Draco's grip.

"But then you employed certain, ah, arguments, shall we say, to bring me round to your point of view," Draco went on. He kept her wrists tightly secured in one of his hands. With the other, he gently pulled down the robe, exposing the tops of her creamy, faintly freckled breasts. "You pressed these against me, Weasley. That was very convincing, I must say." He moved closer still. "You nibbled at the side of my neck. A very persuasive method. You know, I think you even bit my _ear_…"

Then he let go of her wrists.

Ginny immediately curled up into a small ball on the couch, crying. "Whatever's the matter, Weasley?" she heard him ask, his voice light and casual. She raised her head. "You know what it is!" she screamed at him.

"Oh, I was just teasing you a bit," he said. "No need to get so upset, is there? But then, you were teasing me as well. It was pretty dreadful. I suppose you'd rather not talk about it, but it _would_ be such perfect blackmail material… really, Weasley, there's no need to carry on so… do try to get hold of yourself…"

"I, I, I can't," she hiccupped.

"This is worse than _last_ year," he said. "Do you want me to lie down and pretend to be asleep? You could take advantage of me, if you like."

"This isn't _funny_, Malfoy, and you know it isn't! Oh, gods, what's happening to me? You know. You've got to know. What have you done to me? I feel like I'm coming apart!"

"I suppose you'd like to seduce me. You've got me drunk and you're about to make an assault on my boyish virtue. Weasley, you're a witch. But then, we already knew that—"

She could bear no more. She launched herself at him, crying out, trying to hit him with her fists, to kick at his shins, unable to endure another instant of his amused smile, or the sound of his superior voice.

"Weasley, have you gone mad? Were you bitten by a rabid Kneazle on the way here? Ouch! Oh, fuck!" Draco sounded _alarmed_, she thought with vicious satisfaction. Growing up with six brothers had taught her to fight viciously, too. "Ow—oh! Watch the family _jewels_, if you don't mind!" She felt him grabbing her wrists again. Just before he slammed her to the back of the couch, she wriggled her shoulders, and the robe fell completely off her upper body, leaving her bare to the waist. He stared at her breasts. She stared back.

"You've got me into this mess, Malfoy," she said. "I don't know how, but you have. Now you get me out of it."

"A man can only take so much, you know," he said.

Was his breathing was uneven? She wondered. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"Just what are you offering me, Weasley?"

"I…" What the hell was he expecting her to do? Think coherently? He was in for a disappointment, if so. "I don't _know_, just do something to make this stop, Malfoy, you have to _do_ something!"

"Something?" He raised an eyebrow. "That's rather vague…What do you want, Weasley?"

"I have to get some kind of relief from this!"

"Relief? Do you mean the sort that the _Witches' Corgi Dog Rescue and Tea Biscuit Society_ used to provide, or—"

"Damn it, Malfoy! I feel like I'm going to die if I don't come in the next ten seconds!" she shrieked, and then shut her mouth in horror.

"Ah. I _see_," Draco purred. "Well, we've reached my area of expertise, as it happens. Would you like me to give you the sort of relief I specialize in, Weasley? I'm really quite expert at it."

She turned her head away. "Yes," she choked.

"But what are you offering _me_ in exchange?" he repeated.

"I… " Oh, she _really_ couldn't look at him now. "Look, I'm not—I can't—"

"You can't what?"

"Um—"

He pinched her nipple, and she stifled a scream at the nearly unbearable stab of pleasure.

"You can't _what_, Weasley?"

"I can't have sex with you," she blurted. "I just can't. My first time can't _be_ like this, don't you understand? The first man who ever makes love to me can't be… I mean, he has to… and I have to _be_ in lo—oh, Malfoy, you know what I mean!"

A spasm of something that might have been pain passed over his face. "Yes, I know what you mean. But Weasley, you really ought to think about the fact that if I wanted to shag you, then you couldn't very well stop me."

A shiver of fear passed through her. Yes. Draco was right. He had her pinned to the couch, a silk robe half-slipping off her, he was so much stronger than she was, there was nothing she could do to escape him… she couldn't stop him forcing her to have sex with him. She was sure he could see the raw fear in her eyes.

Then he smiled, and the shadow lifted. "Oh, Weasley, don't look at me like that. I'm only trying to point out that you really ought to avoid getting yourself into similar situations in the future, if you don't plan to follow through. A man can only take so much. Remember?" He leaned forward and bit at the side of her neck, and she gasped at the fiery sensation. "We're not going to fuck, Weasley," he whispered. "No. That's too dangerous. But we can have a bit of fun, can't we? I do hate to see you in such a state. I'm not a monster, you know. I couldn't leave such a pretty girl in such pain and desperation. And you're desperate for it, aren't you?"

"Yes." The confession was torn out of her.

"You want me to give you release, don't you?" crooned the dark, smooth voice. "You know that I can make you feel like you've never felt?"

She nodded.

"Then ask me nicely, Weasley."

"I don't know what you mean."

He leaned closer to her, whispering in her ear. "I want you to beg me for it."

She hesitated. A bubble of sanity rose briefly to the surface. _What the fuck am I doing?_

He tugged at her nipples, and there was no pride in her anymore. "All right," she moaned.

"That doesn't sound much like begging to me," Draco said relentless. "I want to hear you beg me properly, Weasley."

Ginny was dimly aware that if she'd been in anything resembling her right mind, she would have been horribly embarrassed that she was actually about to beg Draco Malfoy for sexual release. But she wasn't in her right mind at all, and his fingers were a millimeter away from her nipples and his big hands were moving so that they almost _almost_ cupped her breasts and she was so close to him and could smell his chocolate scent and she craved every inch of him absolutely desperately, and she would do anything, anything at all to get him at that moment of utter insanity.

"Please!" she finally blurted. "Please, Malfoy, make me come. I'm begging you. Do anything you have to."

"I'm free to explore your body in any way I wish?"

"Yes. Yes, just not… you know… no actual sex."

"And it's uncharted territory, correct?"

"Nobody's ever touched me this way before. Please- _please_- just tell me what it is you want, Malfoy—"

"That's what I want," he said.

"That's it?" she asked incredulously.

"For now," he said softly. "I need exclusive rights to explore you first, Weasley. I was a very spoiled child, you see, and I don't like sharing my toys."

For a second or so, the implications of what she was doing—what she'd agreed to let _him_ do—nagged at Ginny's mind. She'd never done more than snogging, and just a bit of groping, none of which had been very inspiring. She'd wanted more for a long time. She'd ached for physical fulfillment with a boy she loved, and she'd imagined them happily exploring each other's bodies. But that was the catch. She'd longed for this to come packaged with love, and she certainly knew that Draco Malfoy didn't love her. He didn't have to tell her that. She hesitated.

His fingernails scratched at her nipples. His silvery eyes set into his angel's face shimmered only inches from hers. "Yes or no?" he asked. His hands slid down to firmly squeeze her breasts.

"Yes, oh, gods, yes," she moaned. "You can, yes, I'll let you do anything you want with me, Malfoy, just please, please…" She couldn't even finish the sentence. The blood in her veins had been replaced with boiling lead.

"Ahhh." Draco let out a long, long sigh. "You have a deal, Weasley."

His words barely penetrated her mind, but they meant that something would happen soon, and she started sobbing in relief. He patted her shoulder, and even that contact was like a stinging lash of fire. She jerked, and tears rolled down her face. "Ssh, shh, it's almost over. I'll take the pain away now," he was saying soothingly." Just lie back, Weasley, and let my fingers do their work."

He pushed her onto her back, and she fell bonelessly onto the couch, half-sitting, half-lying. _Shh, shh,_ he kept repeating, and every touch of his hands made her jerk almost off the couch. "Don't torture me anymore," she sobbed, hardly even aware of what she was saying. "I went too far with this," he muttered. "I didn't mean for you to get to this point—I didn't want you to feel this sort of pain- _shh_, Weasley. I'll give you relief now. I promise I will. Trust me."

_Trust Draco,_ the photograph-Ginny had said to her that morning, in what seemed like another time altogether. And she did trust him, with this at least. _He won't leave me like this,_ Ginny realized. _He wouldn't do that. He brought me here, and he's going to bring me back._ A bit of calm seemed to spread over her then, knowing that everything would be all right, and the agony and absolute desperation throbbing through every inch of her body died down a little. She opened her eyes and watched Draco's hands carefully cup her breasts, one by one, as if on display. He stared down at them, no, she thought, he _devoured_ them with his eyes, slowly and with great care. She blushed. There was just something _about_ the way he looked at her now… Instinctively, her hands went up to cover herself.

"Ah, ah," he said pleasantly. "Don't make me restrain you, Weasley."

She gave a low moan at the thought; she couldn't _help_ it, she remembered what he'd said much earlier about restraints, and his mouth curved up in amusement. "Or would you like that?"

"I don't know," she mumbled, looking away in embarrassment.

"Would you let me restrain you? _Do_ you think you'd like it?"

Ginny shivered. "I would."

"So would I. But not now," Draco said after a brief pause. "Just keep your hands where they are, Weasley. Don't make me tell you again." He played lightly with her breasts, his touches constantly deepening, and in a flash, she understood what he'd been doing earlier. He'd taken time to think about how he wanted to stimulate her and exactly what would bring her the most pleasure. The thought was so incredibly erotic that she couldn't keep her hips still, and she started squirming. She heard his breath hissed through his teeth.

"You want more, I suppose?" he asked.

"Please," she gasped.

"You do ask so very nicely, Weasley. I don't think I can refuse you." Slowly, he bent his head down, and he flicked his tongue round and round each of her nipples in turn. She arched her back, crying out, as he deepened the pressure, sucking and lightly biting. But it wasn't enough, not _nearly_ enough. He pulled her up to him and then his hands started roaming deliciously all over her body, her arms, her back, the curve of her bottom, her waist, and then down to her ankles, and it was all like food that she'd been starving for her entire lifetime and hadn't even realized it. His fingers slid up her calves to her knees, then teased at her inner thighs. Then, gently but steadily, he began to ease her legs apart. She stiffened.

"Shh," said Draco, throwing aside the green silk robe. Then his fingers stilled.

"What? What is it?" she panted.

"I'm just… looking at you," he said tightly. "You, in those black lace knickers. Spread your thighs a bit further."

She felt a little thrill of fear in spite of herself, but she obeyed him.

And she began to moan in relief. Fire. He was touching her with pure, white-hot fire, because nobody's hand could feel like that. The fire was shaped like long, knobbly fingers, and they explored her thoroughly, lingering on each sensitive area, exquisitely pressing on every nerve. Harder and harder and harder and the waves of pleasure built and built and Ginny couldn't breathe anymore but it didn't matter, all that mattered was that delicious agonizing fire and she threw herself up against it, shutting her eyes tightly. Almost there. Almost! Just a few more strokes, in just the right place—

Why was he stopping?

"Malfoy, please," she begged shamelessly. "Please, I need it, now!"

He looked down into her face, and his eyes were alight with something she couldn't understand, some intense emotion that made no sense to her, because they didn't feel any emotion like that for each other, did they? It was almost as if he was trying to find something in her that he couldn't quite see, and Ginny trembled on the edge of a sob. "Fuck, Malfoy, please! I really _will_ die if you don't let me come!"

"Then come for me, Weasley," he said harshly. "Take what I can give you. It's all I can give you!" And he started again, oh, thank all the gods! She cried and trembled and convulsed in his arms, over, and over, and over again, and he relentlessly forced her to a pitch of near-unbearable pleasure each time. She had been waiting forever and it was all worth it, because every moment of agony and frustration was washed away and dissolved in the tides of unendurable pleasure he drew out of her, as inexorable as the moon pulling the tides out of all the oceans on the surface of the earth.

"It's true, isn't it?" he growled. "You've never had anything like this. Nobody's ever made your body feel this way. Never."

"No. Ohhh.. I don't know if I can take any more…"

"You can and you will." He pinned down her hips with one arm. "Yes. Push your hips up at me. Struggle. Now come for me, Weasley. Again. Again. Someday I'm going to _have_ you, I'll have everything you can give me, do you fucking _hear_ me, you _promise_ me I'll have you and no other man will ever even _touch_-"

"You can't—you shouldn't- _oh!_" And she moaned for him, over, and over, and over again.

Then she began to slow down, and so did she, and finally they both came to rest. She was completely covered with sweat and panting so hard that she couldn't seem to even get each breath properly. When she could raise her head again, just slightly, she saw that Draco was still looking down at her. One blanket was just barely wrapped round his waist and she could see his bare, smooth, muscled chest. It was a thin blanket. Her eyes widened as she saw what lay below his waist.

"Um…" She really could barely even get her mouth to work. "Do you want me to, uh…" She pointed.

He closed his eyes tightly. "Weasley, I don't think you'd better touch me."

"But don't you need to, um…"

"Yes. I need to do _something._" He got to his feet, giving the knot of the blanket a vicious twist.

"Don't you dare go out into the rain to wank off!"

"It would be for the best," he said between clenched teeth.

"Do you actually _want_ to?" she demanded.

"Of course I don't," said Draco. "I want to stay here and fuck you. But I can't do that, so my options are a bit limited."

"How about if you go all the way to the other end of the room? I'd really, really like to see it," pleaded Ginny.

Draco gave an alarmingly loud groan.

"What on earth—"

"I was rather thinking that maybe I don't even _need_ to wank off, after hearing that," he said after a pause. "All right, Weasley. You'll get your wish." He walked all the way to the other end of the living room, just beneath the picture window, and dropped the blanket.

Ginny strained to see. Draco was standing in the shadows, and she chewed on her nails. The gods could not be so cruel. Then the moon moved out from behind the clouds. The rain had stopped. It fell partly on him, and she saw his body dappled by the light, his chest, his sinewy legs, his lanky hands and big feet, he was silhouetted, clearly outlined, and oh shite but what she saw, what was finally revealed between his thighs... Her mouth watered. She couldn't see every detail. There were just too many shadows, and the distance was just too far. But finally, _finally,_ she did see him.

"Now watch me," said Draco. He grasped himself in one hand. "This won't take long. Not long at all. I'm ready to burst. You've made me this way." And she did watch. He collapsed back against the wall and slid to the floor, and she got up and ran over to him, holding his body, feeling him jerk and quiver, hearing him breathe something that could have been only a breath but could also have been a very, very slurred word. It might have been _Ginny, my Ginny, my Ginny, my Ginny. Ginny. Mine. Mine. My Ginny._

But there were a lot of M's in it. The word might also have been Marie, she thought.

Either way, she laid her hand against Draco's sweaty forehead. "Let's go to sleep," she whispered. "Yes," he said quietly. He pulled her to her feet, and they walked to the bedroom together, the fire dying down behind them.


	22. What Dreams May Come

A/N:  
Thanks to all the reviewers, including this one reader who I didn't thank by name from the last chapter… the first person who reviewed, I think… anyway, ff dot net is set up so that it's hard to access the reviews unless you have the link from the last chapter, so each reviewer is loved and special even though I don't have your names. Enjoy.

+++  
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

- _Oscar Wilde_

The dream went on as usual.

"Silly girl," said Tom Riddle, standing above her in the Chamber of Secrets. Except that he wasn't Tom Riddle at all. She knew who she'd really see by the flickering torchlight the second she looked up. "I became quite bored with having to listen to a silly girl's silly little problems."

"I got out of here," said Ginny, her voice unsteady. "You _can't_ have trapped me here again! I escaped a long time ago!"

A hand reached down to stroke her helpless, bound body. "Stupid girl," he said. "You've never escaped at all. You've carried this chamber within you since you were eleven years old."

"Nobody can know that," she panted. "Especially not Harry. He would think I was a dirty, bad girl; I have to stay pure and clean for him, so he can't-"

She awoke with a jerk.

Ginny propped herself up on her elbow. She could see an owl silhouetted against the window, and the moonlight was still quite bright; she couldn't have been asleep for long. Draco stood at the far end of the bed with his back to her, reading an unrolled parchment. It was long and covered with slanting dark writing, and another, smaller note seemed to be tucked into it. As she watched, he ran his fingers along its surface, and the entire thing vanished into smoke.

The owl flew away, spreading its white and gray wings. _I've seen that owl before,_ thought Ginny. _Yes…_ With a bit more effort, she could even dredge up its name. _Chizbolt._ It was one of the Gringotts owls. She thought it was actually the one that had delivered the contract for the kiln and art studio to her. She shook her head, trying to clear the dark, clutching remnants of dream. She could never remember that dream when she woke up from it, but she never wanted to. She peered round, trying to see Draco's face, and finally sat up all the way. He jumped slightly and turned back towards her.

"What was that?" she asked. "Bad news?"

He remained silent.

"You've got to tell me," she said.

"Well, it wasn't particularly good," said Draco. "But I can't say that I really know anything more, as of yet."

"You can't leave it at that," insisted Ginny. "I want details, and you have to give them to me. You don't have any choice. And I recognized that owl."

Draco nodded. "I suppose I ought to have known that you would. Gringotts wrote me that there was a… problem… with the contents of one of the Malfoy vaults. In cases like that, the primary vaultholder naturally needs to return."

Ginny bit her lower lip, thinking, knowing that even _in vino veritas_ would never make Draco Malfoy tell the entire truth. Finally, she held out her hand to him, pulling the comforter back.

"Come to bed," she said.

Draco kept standing very still in the moonlight, his hair and body and eyes all colored the same unearthly silver, so completely motionless that he scarcely seemed to be breathing. He looked exactly like a marble statue, she thought.

"Don't you want to come back?" she asked. "I mean, this is where you were sleeping, right? Here, in this bed, with me?" She didn't even remember going down the hall or getting into bed or falling asleep with Draco at all, but that was clearly what must have happened… wasn't it?

"No. I was asleep in the chair, or rather, not asleep. I was staring at you. And now you're asking me if I want to sleep in the same bed with you," he repeated tonelessly. "Do I want… " He paused. "No. I don't want to at all."

For a second, Ginny couldn't even breathe. The shock of his words had doused her with freezing water, just as surely as if she'd been stuck outside in the storm at its worst. How could he… how _dare_ he… just who the hell did he think he was, anyway…

"I don't _want_ to," said Draco. His words sounded strangely harsh, as if they were being torn from him, one by one, very much against his will.

"Then why are you still standing there, Malfoy?"

He looked down at her outstretched arms. She realized that she was still holding out the covers for him, and she yanked them back, disgusted with herself. His hand came down on her wrist.

"Let me in," he said.

_Shite. I already have,_ thought Ginny. "I ought to make you beg me," she said.

Draco bent his head, so that he was completely in shadow. "Please." The word was a very faint whisper.

For a moment, Ginny seriously wondered if she'd slipped into a different sort of dream, surely no less frightening and no less dangerous than the one she could never remember, because she couldn't _possibly_ have heard Draco Malfoy use that word. But even if this was a dream, he was still standing over her, waiting for her reply, and so she nodded her head and he climbed into bed next to her. She sighed wordlessly at the utter bliss of feeling Draco Malfoy sliding into her arms and pressing closely against her body, because she simply couldn't help it; nobody could have done. _Dangerous, this is so dangerous,_ she thought. They were almost nothing to each other, after all. He'd satisfied her desperate craving for release, but there was nothing between them except that. There _couldn't_ be.

"I wonder," he said sleepily.

_So do I,_ thought Ginny. _If I'm going mad, mostly._ She wasn't about to ask him what he meant.

"Because it's possible. Just possible, I suppose. Perhaps you're foreseeing the future…"

"I don't understand. Foreseeing the future about what?" she asked.

"When you said that everything really might come out all right in the end. Weasley, how were your grades in Divination?"

"Dreadful," admitted Ginny. "And anyway, I don't remember saying that at all."

"Well, you did. Do you think it actually could?" He sounded very wistful, she thought, which tipped the scales even further in the direction of the dream theory.

"Yes,' said Ginny. She curled her fingers into his, which was safe enough if this were only a dream-Draco, after all. "It could do. We'll wake up in the morning, and it'll just be… all right.'

Draco's eyes closed. "Really?"

"Really," said Ginny.

He gave a sigh, and he pressed himself so closely that she could feel every inch of his body against hers. "How strange. You make me want to believe it, Ginny Weasley. I almost think I could. Or at least it seems that way, when you've given me so much pleasure…"

"Me?" she asked curiously. She'd been falling asleep, but that had dragged her back. "I mean, what you did for me was amazing, Malfoy, but I didn't know that I gave you anything in particular."

"You did," he mumbled. "You did. You've given me too much, Weasley. I've taken too much from you."

_Have I?_ Ginny wondered. _Have you?_

"Too much… too much…" he muttered, frowning.

"Malfoy, I didn't know you had a conscience," she said.

"Sometimes," he said, so quietly that she could barely hear it. "It speaks in a very small voice. It always seems to visit me very late at night, and it whispers to me about things I've done. It reminds me of things I've tried to forget."

"I think I've had that too, sometimes," Ginny admitted. "I've woken up so many times after a dream about… well, about something that happened to me, and I'd have the same dream every single time, and I'd always think I heard his voice. Telling me about all the awful things I'd done. Telling me it was all my fault."

"Whose voice?" asked Draco, laying the side of his face against her hair.

"It's not important. It doesn't matter. I don't really remember, anyway," lied Ginny. _Tom Riddle's voice. Or your father's voice. Or both. Tom always sounded exactly like Lucius Malfoy in my dreams, until I couldn't tell the two apart anymore._

"I really should just run right out into this storm, you know," mumbled Draco.

"Don't start that up again," said Ginny. "And anyway, it isn't raining anymore."

"So even that's right out." His eyes were closed, and he looked very young, Ginny thought. _He really looks exactly like that sixteen-year-old Draco in the portrait._

"I've taken too much," he repeated.

Ginny didn't know how to answer that. She stroked his back soothingly, then his shoulders, and she wondered some more. She looked down at the beautiful young man lying in her arms, and for the first time, she began thinking about everything he had become to her. It seemed rather important to do that if this actually wasn't a dream, after all, and that seemed less and less likely. He was the first man who had ever seen her naked, and the first who had ever touched her intimately. He was the first who had ever made her cry out in pleasure as he expertly stimulated her body and then brought her to glorious release, and the first _she_ had ever seen nude and magnificently hard and ready for her, bringing himself to climax as he groaned something that might, just might, have been her name. These were things she had sworn to share only with a man she loved, and she'd always, always thought that this man would be Harry Potter. Her brief, unsuccessful attempts with Michael and Colin and Blaise had only taught her the lesson that she didn't want sex without love. And then she'd promptly turned around and given all these firsts to Draco Malfoy, who didn't love her at all. It was like losing just a bit of her virginity. Ginny would never have even thought that such a thing was possible—it sounded rather like being a little bit pregnant—but she certainly felt that way now.

He was still mumbling something, but she really couldn't tell what it was anymore. There didn't seem to be coherent words in it. She kept stroking his arm, his elbow, his hand, and then moved up to his left wrist. Her fingers caught on something raised and twisted and unpleasantly hot. She froze.

_The Dark Mark._

He had knelt before Voldemort, and he had taken it willingly into his flesh when he was only sixteen years old. He had sworn to kill Dumbledore, even though he hadn't done it. He had been a Death Eater, however briefly, however unsuccessfully. And now he would always, always carry the mark that had branded him with all of those choices. It was a part of Draco Malfoy, and it always would be. Ginny had a sudden, complete moment of clarity. It was as if she had never touched a drop of firewhiskey that night at all.

It was more than just the fact that Draco Malfoy couldn't possibly love her, and that she'd given him things that she hadn't wanted to give to anyone without love. It was more than the fact that he'd given her pleasure that she knew she couldn't have even begun to get from any other man she'd ever known; if she added together all the boys and men she'd ever dated and then multiplied them by ten, they probably _still_ wouldn't come close to what Malfoy had to offer in that department. She knew instinctively that nobody else would ever be able to measure up to him, so what the hell was she going to do now that he'd awakened her body to sensual pleasure, but they could never do this again because he didn't care about her? All of that was really only the beginning.

_I don't know if he can love anyone. Not just me, but anyone at all. I wonder how I seem to know that… but I do. He has secrets, Draco Malfoy does. There are locked rooms in his mind, and they don't have any keys. So do I, but that's why I know just how dangerous they are… He was a Death Eater. He has the Dark Mark. He fought on the wrong side during the war. Then he disappeared for over a year, and nobody knows what happened to him or what he did. And what's the real truth about Astoria Greengrass? And Marie. Always, always Marie._

_He's right,_ she thought. _He took too much. I gave too much._

And still…

_Stupid, evil brain!_

And still, looking down into Draco's beautiful, troubled, unreadable face, Ginny could not find one single moment of regret in her mind or heart or soul for anything she had allowed him to do to her. Mostly, she regretted that he hadn't allowed her to do the same to him. She would have done it all over again, and she knew it. And she wasn't sure if she'd ever had a thought in her life that had frightened her half so much.

Draco opened his eyes and turned his face up to hers, looking oddly lost. Then he raised a hand and stroked the side of her cheek, and his touch went all the way down to the marrow of her bones.

"Yes," he said. "Everything could turn out all right, couldn't it? Or if it can't-and if you know, somehow, that it won't- then keep it to yourself, Ginny Weasley. I don't want to know the truth. Not tonight. Not for the very little of this night that's left to us." Then he kissed the side of her neck. That soft, light, lingering kiss felt more dangerous than anything else that had happened all night long. For a second, Ginny felt as if she were standing outside herself, appraising him almost coldly, wondering exactly how deeply he really could hurt her, if she allowed him to do it.

"Let's just go to sleep," she finally said.

+++

It was the same dream, replayed for the thousandth time.

"Silly girl," said Tom Riddle, standing above her in the Chamber of Secrets. Except that he wasn't Tom Riddle at all. She knew who she'd really see by the flickering torchlight the second she looked up. "I became quite bored with having to listen to a silly girl's silly little problems."

"I got out of here," said Ginny, her voice unsteady. "You _can't_ have trapped me here again! I escaped a long time ago!"

A hand reached down to stroke her helpless, bound body. "Stupid girl," he said. "You've never escaped at all. You've carried this chamber within you since you were eleven years old."

"Nobody can know that," she panted. "Especially not Harry. He would think I was a dirty, bad girl; I have to stay pure and clean for him, so he can't-"

Then she stopped. For the very first time, in all the times she'd ever had that dream, she no longer cared what Harry knew, or didn't know.

"It doesn't matter anymore," she said. "Harry never cared anyway."

"No, he didn't," the voice said silkily. "That's true enough. But I'm very much afraid that you must still keep the secret, Ginny Weasley." The icy cold hand reached down to run itself along her body, from head to toe. Ginny shrank away; it felt like the touch of death, but she was helpless and bound and she could do nothing to escape.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because if any boy ever learns that your mind and soul are not perfect and pure, that it was you who opened the chamber, and who obeyed the commands of the shade of Voldemort," said the voice, " then he would never forgive you. He would know that you were impure filth, and he could never want you. And he would always wonder exactly what Voldemort's sixteen-year-old self had done to you…"

Ginny trembled from head to foot. "It's a lie," she said passionately. "I'm pure. Tom Riddle never touched me. He couldn't begin to take form nearly enough to do that—I was examined by mediwitches at St. Mungo's and they said he was never more than an evil spirit—"

"But he raped your mind, my dear. Didn't he?"

"Yes," said Ginny, remembering. "Yes. That's what nobody can ever know."

"There you have it. No boy or man would ever want you, if he knew that secret."

"Any man would despise me," Ginny repeated, as she always had. "No man can ever know."

"I alone will keep your secrets," said the smooth, silky voice. "Do you know now for whom I have always kept you, Ginny Weasley?" The hand caressed Ginny's cheek tenderly. She looked up in terror, and, as always, she saw the hand belonged to Lucius Malfoy. It had done all along.

"For your son," she whispered.

"Ah, yes. I will hold the power to offer Draco his obsession, his dream of perfect purity. And that is you, Ginny Weasley. He will think that he is getting the sort of purity he wants from you. But he must never, never know the true secrets in your heart and soul."

Ginny looked down, into her chest, and saw some of the secrets. They whispered and cried sadly to each other, like lost children. Lucius chuckled and reached down with one hand to stir some of them up, and they shrank away. Ginny gritted her teeth and wrenched herself up into a sitting position, and she found that the chains didn't bind her quite so tightly as she'd thought.

"How do you know that Draco really wants with me?" she asked for the very first time.

"What?" For the first time in all the horrible times she'd ever had that dream, she thought, Lucius sounded surprised. Thrown off balance. It gave her a bit of hope.

"Maybe you don't know anything about what Draco wants, or feels, or thinks, or is. Maybe you don't really know him at all."

"Don't try to tell me about my son," snarled Lucius. "I know him better than anyone else in the world. I ought to; I shaped him, I molded him… there isn't a thought in his head that I didn't put there…"

"Draco isn't your creation," she said. "He is himself."

There was fear in Lucius' eyes, she thought. Yes. There definitely was. But it was only a flash, and then it was gone. "He is corrupted to the core," he said. "He has fallen too far. You do not know what he is capable of. You do not know what he will do. He will never, never care for you, Ginny Weasley. I have twisted his heart, you see, so that it cannot contain love." Lucius held up a red and silver paper valentine heart and began to shred it cruelly between the talonlike fingers on one hand.

"I don't believe you," said Ginny.

"Oh? Then let me show you, Ginny Weasley. You will see the heart that Draco Malfoy has built, and you will know that love could never find a place of any sort in it."

The chamber wavered and swam and took shape again. Ginny scrambled to her feet. She was standing in the middle of a long, dark corridor. Its walls were papered a deep red, pulsing in regular beats. _I am standing inside Draco's heart,_ Ginny realized. _Love. I have to find love. It's here somewhere. I just know it!_ The carpet beneath her feet began laughing at her, and then it gave a sudden, violent yank, forcing her to run. She ran down endless halls and past ornately carved doors, seeming to go ever deeper and deeper into a subterranean labyrinth, and the relentless beating never stopped. But the corridors were all sterile and empty, and when she rattled at the knobs, the doors were locked.

"Nothing," said Lucius Malfoy's mocking voice. "I have made sure that his heart contains nothing. You will find nothing, nothing..."

Ginny stopped in the middle of a corridor, panting for breath. She leaned against a red wall, and her leg grazed on something sharp.

"Ouch!" She glanced down.

Blood was trickling down her leg, and a drop of blood gleamed from the sharp end of a golden key set into the lock of a gleaming wooden door. She leaned down to turn the key, and the door swung open. She saw a large bed with ruby-colored hangings and a table with a vase of full-blown red roses, petals falling to the polished surface. The lush scent of roses filled the dimly lit room. _I've seen this room before,_ she thought. _I've been here. But where, when, how?_ She stepped in cautiously and shut the door, peering around. Her eyes adjusted to the light, and she caught her breath when she saw that a very young Draco was sitting on the bed. _Oh, how young he is!_ He might have even been the sixteen-year-old Draco in the portrait.

He gave a violent start and stared at her. "It can't be you."

"It's me." Ginny sat awkwardly on the bed. He moved stiffly to one side to make room for her.

"I mean, um… I suppose that I'm the one you've been waiting for," she said. "Right?"

He gave a short nod, looking at her warily.

"You're a part of Draco's heart, right?"

"A small part," the boy whispered. "But the very deepest part of all. I've had to stay hidden."

"Uh…" Ginny wasn't quite sure what to say next. "It's good that you're here," she said in what she hoped was an encouraging tone of voice. "And _I'm_ finally here. That's good too, right?"

"But I thought you were never coming," he said in an exhausted voice. "I've waited _so_ long. I'd given up, really…"

Ginny looked more closely and saw that this Draco had been crying. His eyes were still red. His lips trembled, and he looked at her longingly, and then he threw himself into her arms and sobs shook his thin frame. She held him and soothed him and stroked his back and shoulders and arms, whispering _shh, shh, it's going to be all right,_ but he still kept sobbing hopelessly, as if sorrow had become his dwelling-place, so finally there was nothing to do but to kiss him. Their kisses were sweet and terrible and endless and somewhere in the middle of them, Ginny felt the wetness of Draco's real tears on her cheeks. The strange rose-colored room had disappeared, and the solid, warm male body in her arms stirred under her hands, holding her head up and scanning her face anxiously, and the sight of his beautiful tear-stained face in the moonlight was like another part of the dream.

"Oh, oh, _oh_, you're here," Draco said feverishly. "I've been waiting so long and I thought you'd never come back and you're _here_. M—"

Ginny often wondered, afterwards, what Draco had been about to say. She couldn't be sure. She knew even then that if she didn't let him finish what he was going to say, she'd never be sure, because she was certainly never going to ask him about it. He might have been about to say _my Ginny_, and she knew it. But he might also have been about to say _Marie_, and she knew that she couldn't bear to hear it. She cut him off by kissing him, hard, and he groaned and kissed her back, passionately, over and over and over again.

"Is this real?" she whispered, between kisses.

"It can't be," said Draco.

"It feels real," she insisted as he pressed his lips to her mouth, her neck, her throat, and her breasts over and over again.

"It's only a dream," he said. "I should know, Ginny. I've dreamed this a thousand times."

"I suppose you're right, then," she said, giving herself up to his kisses.

Their kisses became softer and lighter and sweeter, and finally, he came to rest, laying his head against her breasts. "I wish…" he whispered.

She put a finger over his lips. Then she held him close, and smelled the rich chocolate scent of his skin, and they lay together quietly. And she knew that these moments when they didn't share passion or physical pleasure or ecstasy or anything more than this simple touch were the most dangerous times of all. But for just those few minutes, she could not give them up, and he did not try to push her away.

In the morning, of course, Ginny firmly told herself that this part had been nothing more than a dream.

+++  
Ginny stared at the back of Draco's head as he lay in bed, still asleep. His hair was almost blindingly bright in the full sunlight. She watched him breathing deeply and evenly for a few moments. Then, feeling like a complete coward, she silently got up, gathered her stiff, air-dried clothes from the night before, and tiptoed to the bathroom.

She stood in the shower, soaping her aching muscles. _Thank all the gods for good hot water charms! Or maybe it's just the water heater here._ She let the stream play between her shoulder blades and gave a luxurious wriggle . She felt remarkably good, sort of replete… yes, that was the word… and satisfied, and yet… She sighed, scrubbing between her toes. She had to admit that she wasn't. Not really. Last night had been as if Draco had set her before a fabulous multi-course dinner spread out on a table and given her one single bite.

_Was that a noise?_ Ginny wondered, wrapping a towel around her hair. _Yes. It definitely was. He's up._ She was going to have to march out into the bedroom and face Draco Malfoy at some point, no doubt about it. Getting her thoughts in some sort of order first might at least help. Tugging on her clothes, she decided that she was going to have to slightly revise her opinion from last night. It didn't feel like she'd lost a bit of her virginity. No, it was worse than that. Draco had led her right up to the edge of total fulfillment, and then he'd left her there. The difference was that she'd seen a glimpse of what sex could be, and she could never return to innocence now. She'd always know what she was missing. If she had sex with someone else, she'd always compare him with Draco, and she knew that whoever the man was, he'd always come up wanting. _Oh no. This is not good…. I can see it all now…_

Ginny lay with him in a narrow bed, this nameless, faceless man. "I love you," she whispered, knowing that he loved her. He'd told her so. He was good and decent and safe, whoever he was; there were no depths of darkness in him, no hidden splinters of self. "Darling," he said, moving on her and in her and with her, and she barely felt him or saw him, because all she could feel or see or remember was Draco's face, Draco's body, Draco's smell, and the tears poured down her cheeks and onto the good decent man's shoulder, and he dressed and left her afterwards, covered in her tears, and she knew that she'd broken his good, simple, uncomplicated heart.

Ginny groaned. _Oh, damn Draco Malfoy anyway!_

Staying in the shower of the cottage forever was not an option. Neither was Apparating directly from it, or sinking through the floor into an unspecified underworld, so Ginny eventually came out. Something smelled very nice.

Draco silently handed her a plate of scrambled eggs and toast and a cup of coffee. She raised her eyebrows.

"You actually cooked?"

"My talents are legion," said Draco. "As you have cause to know by now, Weasley."

She blushed. But he only smiled faintly at her, added sugar to his own coffee, and began sipping it. He barely said another word throughout breakfast, and Ginny gratefully followed his lead, sticking to such profundities as requests for the orange marmalade or observations on the pleasant weather outdoors. And yet… and yet, perversely, she did want him to say something. But she didn't know what, so she just ate her eggs, and looked at his impossibly handsome, remote face in the sunlight.

Ginny blinked in the bright sunlight as Draco locked the door. It seemed impossible that they'd actually left the cottage; she'd started to feel like she was going to spend the rest of her life there, but they were really walking towards the Apparition point together now. _But then, what then…_ Well, he'd drop her off at her studio; he'd said so, and then he'd go to Gringotts. And that would be all. That would be the end. She felt like crying.

Draco gave her a sidelong glance. "Sad to leave me, Weasley?" he asked in light tones.

_Oh! There it is. I should've known it was coming._ "It's made for a fun weekend," she said. "But I've got loads to do when I get back."

"Yes, so have I," said Draco.

The words sounded as if they meant more than they said; Ginny just couldn't figure out how. "I… uh… I suppose you'll be seeing Astoria Greengrass as soon as we return," she said. _Idiot!_

"Yes, I'll need to do that," Draco said softly.

"I wish you wouldn't," blurted Ginny. _Oh, gods, why doesn't somebody just show up and shoot me before I say another word!_

He raised an eyebrow. _Oh! There it is. That eyebrow…_ "Jealous, Weasley?"

"Of course not, Malfoy," she said stiffly. "It's just that I still think you're underestimating her. I think she could cause trouble for you. More than you think."

"You're right about that," said Draco. "But don't worry about her. She's no concern of yours."

"I suppose all I can do is to thank you, then," said Ginny.

"For what, exactly?"

"For keeping me safe from the dangers of Astoria Greengrass," she said through gritted teeth.

"Anything else?"

Oh, how she hated that tone of voice.

"Let's see," she said, ticking off the points on her fingers. "You made breakfast. You let me stay at the cottage instead of making me sleep in the rain. Oh, and you didn't take advantage of me last night when you easily could have done. I do have to thank you for that, Malfoy." A thistle bobbed in the wind and lashed across her hand. She struck it viciously out of her way.

"No thanks necessary, Weasley. I somehow managed to survive without being granted access to the sacred Weasley shrine." Draco sidestepped the thistle plant neatly. _He didn't even look at me,_ thought Ginny.

"Well, Malfoy you do understand why we could never actually have sex," she said.

"I suppose I don't exactly understand what you mean," said Draco. "Perhaps you'd better explain it more clearly."

"I mean, we barely even know each other. And it's not as if either one of us cares about the other, either."

Draco did give Ginny a long, very strange look then, and it made her shiver, even though the sun was very warm. Then he smiled suddenly. "I've shagged loads of girls I barely know," he said lightly. "We've both enjoyed it a great deal. I've got little black books filled to the brim with owl numbers of shagging partners I can wing for a nice, uncomplicated go of it. I'd be more than happy to do the same with you, and believe me, you'd enjoy it more than you could imagine. But don't worry, Weasley." He chucked her under the chin. She pulled back. She'd always hated it whenever Percy had done that to her. "I know all about your prim set of standards now," he went on. He affected a falsetto voice. "Oh, Malfoy! I could never submit to your crude advances! I must be deeply, truly madly in love with the first boy I ever permit to enter the sacred vessel that is my virginal body! Which I suppose explains the fact that you were drunk on scotch and soda and ready to go home with Blaise Zabini last night—"

Ginny blushed hotly. "That was wrong, okay? _I_ was wrong. That's what I've realized. I would have regretted it horribly the next morning—well, this morning, I suppose. If I'm doomed to be under the no-sex curse until I find true love, then I guess that's that. Or maybe not true love, exactly, but the first man I ever sleep with does have to at least care about me." She stopped. Why the hell was she explaining all of this to Draco Malfoy? It wasn't as if he truly cared, after all.

"I suppose this means that you won't accept that bargain I was planning to offer," Draco said with mock sadness.

"What bargain?" Ginny asked cautiously. She definitely did not trust the look on his face.

"It occurred to me when I was so nobly offering up my considerable erotic skills to unselfishly relieve your sexual needs last night. As I began the process of ensuring perfect multiple orgasms for you, I was indeed thinking disinterestedly about England and Quidditch, but in all honesty, that only lasted for about a millisecond or so. I think it was the way you screamed in the exact pitch of high C—by your tenth orgasm or so, it was a highly interesting sound, to say the least."

"Malfoy—" Ginny began. She didn't know how to finish what she'd started to say. Maybe there was no end to what she'd begun, because there was nothing else to say. This was exactly, _exactly_ how she'd been afraid he would behave, and the worst part of all was that she had a deep, uncomfortable feeling that she'd helped to bring it on herself.

"Don't stop me. I've barely even begun. I happened to remember that you'd said something about that dreadful no-sex curse, possibly cast on you by a dreary witch left over from an unsuccessful road show of _Macbeth_, and your rabbiting on and on about how much you'd like to break it. And you know, I'm very, very good at cursebreaking."

"_Malfoy_-"

"Yes, yes indeed. That's the part I was getting to. Consider choosing me for all your defloration needs, that's my point—"

"Are you going to give me references from all the other virgins you've broken in?"

"I can't. There aren't any. That's why I'd like to try you out, Weasley. You'd be such a delightful novelty. Be careful of that nettle patch, please." He steered her round a bend in the cattle track they were following.

Why were her eyes prickling with tears? That didn't make any sense at all. She wiped her nose, hiding her face behind her hand.

"And it wouldn't be just the magnificent introductory sex," Draco went on. "I could give you so many things you've never had, Weasley. Have you ever been to the South of France? No? Well, of course you haven't; I don't think the Weasleys were much in the habit of luxurious trips. There's a lovely Malfoy property there; the Villa Straylight, it's called. I could take you there as early as this 'd love it. Everything is so peaceful and secluded, no neighbors at all. Lovely white sand beaches. Then there's another one in the Bahamas. Private moonlight swims, cabanas, snorkeling, coral reefs…"

"I can't swim."

"You really ought to learn. Anyway, there's another Malfoy property in a condominium in New York City. You could go shopping. I'd love to see you in some jewelry. Sapphires, to match your eyes. And proper clothes, and shoes. Jimmy Choos would be nice—"

"That's enough, Malfoy! You're going to take me to the beach and give me jewelry and shoes, and in return I'm expected to sleep with you? What am I, a whore?" She stabbed her finger into his chest.

Something very, very dark flickered in his eyes, something completely at odds with his flippant tones and carelessly amused face. Then they lightened back to silver. "Of course you're not," he said softly. "You can't think I meant to call you that."

Ginny was instantly ashamed. Few words in the wizarding world were more shameful or insulting; even "mudblood" hardly compared to "whore". The correct and respectful term was _companion_; among the uppercrust purebloods from older families, women who followed that profession at the Crystal Palace might command a certain sort of respect, and some of them could even enter polite society, depending on what sort of position they had filled. But to call a woman a whore was to say the worst thing that could be said about her. "I know you didn't," she mumbled.

"I'm joking about everything, Weasley. Only joking."

She drew back from him with a sigh and kept walking, feeling her heart racing, not knowing why.

"I'd be delighted to follow through on all of my offers, of course," he went on. "But—er—you've made your preferences more than clear. I've got loads of women and girls who take this sort of thing more lightly."

"What sort of thing?" asked Ginny, her voice trembling only a bit.

"Sex," he said, his hand reaching out and ruffling her hair. "Physical enjoyment. It can be fun, Weasley. Light, amusing, pleasant. A diversion. But casual, not serious in the least."

She looked down. "Not for me," she whispered. "I know that now."

"Good," he said softly. "Ah… self-discovery is always good, I mean. Just think, Weasley—you might have to pay a Muggle psychotherapist fifty Galleons an hour for that."

Ginny cleared her throat. "I really did—do—want to thank you, Malfoy. For not taking advantage of me when you could have done, I mean."

"You're so welcome," he said graciously. "And I'm always glad to help a girl out."

She squinted at the outbuilding that she remembered from the night before. _Thank all the gods, we're almost there._ "One very good thing has come out of this, at least. I know I would never, ever sleep with Harry."

"Yes, I think that's an extraordinarily good thing. I believe that your first time could be just magnificent with the right man, Weasley, and the thought of your being sacrificed to Potter is truly appalling. It really _is_ too bad that you're so addicted to that rubbish about Vaseline-on-the-lens, puppies-and-kittens-and-rainbows true love, because I'd do such a grand job of it—oh, I'm not going to pressure you, Weasley, but really, you ought to know. Our first time would be a bit like the title page of the most magnificent masterpiece ever written—"

"Oh, Malfoy, that really is over the top." Ginny rolled her eyes.

"And yet it's true! Absolutely true!"

"Well, yes, but there's just one problem. I've seen you now. Not exceptionally well, not in great detail, because it was from across the room and you were sort of in the shadows, but Malfoy, your equipment is rather intimidating. And get that _look_ off your face. I would think that the first time would _hurt_."

"Maybe a bit," Draco admitted. "But two hours of foreplay would make all the difference, I think."

"Two hours?"

"Well, after last night, I rather hope that understand I'm not much into 'wham, bam, thank you, ma'am.' Your face is the most _interesting_ shade of red I've ever seen, by the way. I'd love to paint it."

"Are we there yet?" Ginny started walking faster.

"But we've got to clear this point up, Weasley. I'd hate for my reputation to suffer. You've really got to understand, once and for all, that my idea of foreplay isn't exactly—"

Draco's smile was positively devilish, Ginny decided. It was _definitely_ a good thing that they were almost to that Apparition point.

"'Brace yourself, Weasley, I'm coming aboard!'" he chirped, pushing her against the wall of the outbuilding.

"Let go of me, Malfoy—if you don't let go right this second, I'll—ooh!" Ginny realized that he was shaking with laughter.

"Dry up, Weasley," he chuckled, tickling her lightly. "I'm not going to attack your oh-so-precious virtue. I might as well come clean. I'm not attacking anyone for a bit yet. I might as well be wearing a bloody chastity belt."

"What do you mean?" asked Ginny, thinking that it hadn't seemed to be attached all that firmly the night before.

"All right. I suppose it's time for an explanation, isn't it?" He sighed. "I've been very much in two minds about whether to tell you this or not, but after that little chat with Astoria last night, I'm quite sure I can handle her. There's really nothing to worry about now, so you might as well know."

"Does that mean that you're finally going to explain every stupidly mysterious thing?"

"Well, when, it comes to the Pythagorean theorem, you're on your own." Draco shrugged. "But I have an extremely tiresome bond with Astoria; it's called the Pureblood Bond of Engagement. If I shag anyone else, she'll know about it, and she'll be able to learn the identity of the person involved very quickly. And I just don't care to deal with the annoying scene she'd cause as a result. I also don't want to take a chance that she'd hurt you—or anyone else involved- once she knew who they were."

Ginny snorted. "If I'd actually decided to do the dirty deed with you, Malfoy, I think I could handle Astoria."

"You don't know what a poisonous bitch she can be," said Draco. "I do."

"Is this what you meant when you said that you were dangerous to me?"

Draco hesitated so briefly that Ginny wasn't sure if she'd imagined it or not. "Yes," Draco said smoothly. "That's exactly what I meant. Astoria can get to you through me, and I do feel a responsibility to keep that from happening."

She thought about that. "It does make sense."

"Of course it does," said Draco. "I didn't think she would follow me here, but alas, she did."

"But why'd you come here in the first place?"

"Ah, ah," chided Draco. "You've got to let me keep some of my secrets. I promise that it's not because I'm a horridly evil Death Eater, all right?"

"Okay," Ginny said reluctantly.

"Anyway, back to the main point. So you see, Weasley, your virtue was always safe from me anyway. But when I saw the sort of state you were in… I _couldn't_ leave you like that. And I got a bit out of it as well. Wanking off with a girl in the same room, just watching me… that was a bit of a flashback. Haven't done that since I don't know when. But dear Loki, that doesn't mean that you're obligated to participate in a bit of how's your father with me."

"That's a relief," said Ginny. And it was, she decided. Somehow the atmosphere between them had become light and casual again, and that was a relief, too. It was.

It _was!_


	23. Headed Back to Trouble

A/N: I'm really really sorry I haven't updated in so long… I'm going to get the ff net version up to date with the FIA one, a chapter at a time. If anybody wants to catch up faster, remember that it's at www dot dracoandginny dot com.

Okay, y'all,these two chapters will culminate in the long-promised shocking plot revelation. Start getting ready for it...

+++

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

- _Thomas Jefferson_

Draco took out his wand and carefully drew a circle around both of them, and the Apparition point began to shimmer in preparation. "Just a few moments, then, and we'll be ready to go. So…" He glanced at her.

"So…" Ginny groped for words. _What the hell does he expect me to say now?_

"So, I'll clear a few things up once we get back to London, and then you'll be free as a bird—glad to wash your hands of all the trouble I've caused you, I expect. I'll straighten things out with the Department of Mysteries for you, by the way."

"Thanks," she said awkwardly, wondering exactly how in the world Draco was going to pull off that particular trick when the entire Ministry probably wanted to send him to Azkaban by now. _Especially Harry. And where did Harry end up, anyway? Malfoy can't have possibly… no, he said he didn't do anything to him, and he couldn't have told an outright lie under that spell. Even though I don't think he's exactly told me the entire truth, either…_

"I hope you do realize that I truly appreciate all of your help, Weasley," said Draco. "I actually may be able to return the favor in the near future, you know. Would you like to hear a little secret?"

_I shouldn't want to,_, thought Ginny. But she already knew that she couldn't resist the chance to learn it, whatever it was. She nodded.

"Assuming that I'm able to pull through this little spot of trouble, you may just be sharing an Apparition circle with the next Junior Minister of Culture."

Ginny's eyes widened. "You?"

"Yes, me. How shocked you sound, Weasley. I suppose you've never given me much credit for artistic aspirations?"

"That's not—" She shut her mouth quickly. She was already aware that Draco did have real artistic talent, because she'd seen his drawings of Marie. But she couldn't very well let _him_ know that she knew, because she had an uncomfortable feeling that then he'd figure out that she'd looked into the crate. The things she'd grabbed from it the night before were still in her pocket, probably a bit worse for wear from all the rain, and she itched for the chance to get a good look at them.

"I don't suppose that spreading a bit of the Malfoy money about hurt your cause," she said instead.

"You cut me to the quick," he said, tapping his wand along some uneven spots in the circle. "Implying that I couldn't succeed on my talents alone… this is just about ready, I think."

"I didn't say that. I just don't understand why you'd bother. It's not as if you need the money."

Draco slid his wand back into its holster. "Perhaps I'm growing a bit tired of drifting, Weasley. There must be more to life than a meaningless round of amusement."

"I wouldn't know," she said. "Some of us actually have to work for a living, Malfoy."

"Well, there you go. I'm slumming in your world, and that's answer enough. But I could perhaps help your career along a little." He tapped his chin with one finger. "One thing comes to mind right now, so I'll tell you what I'll do. The next Pureblood Regency Ball is in about six months. I'll arrange for you to attend as a visiting artist."

"Uh… thank you," said Ginny, stunned. The press and artist invitations were coveted beyond all belief, and normally secured years—or more likely, generations—in advance. "But I won't know anyone there."

"Oh, I'd be more than happy to help you out in any way I can," said Draco. "I'll introduce you to several influential patrons, and I'll give you a tour. It's always held at a replica of the authentic nineteenth-century Almack's Assembly Rooms, did you know?"

"I've heard a bit about it," said Ginny. "My mother mentioned it once or twice." She held her breath, waiting for jibes about poverty-stricken Weasleys, but Draco was still testing the circle for flaws. "She said that it might actually _be_ the nineteenth-century Almack's Assembly Rooms. That the Pureblood Ball might go back in time to the Regency every year, but nobody knew for sure."

"Ah, yes," said Draco. "Nobody knows. It's one of the soft places, where time and space become a bit fluid, and it's connected to a number of other locations in the wizarding world. Interesting, don't you think?"

"I suppose at least one of those is going to be Malfoy property as well." Ginny rolled her eyes. "I think I'm beginning to detect a theme, Malfoy. You'll get me to the ball, whisk me away from the outside world, nobody will know where I am, and then you'll have your wicked way with me. Of course, this will all come after pushing Astoria Greengrass into a bottomless pit, or something. Is that it?"

"I don't know, Weasley," said Draco. "But who's to say. Perhaps you've just figured out my evil plot. If such is the case, bravo."

"Except that I don't believe it for a second," she said.

"But if you've already established that I'm evil, then why wouldn't you put any of those lovely actions a millimetre past me?" he asked.

His voice was light and casual, but there was something in his eyes that chilled her for just a moment. "Oh, I don't think that you'd do anything to me against my will," she said. "I mean, I just can't believe that, Malfoy."

"In this thoroughly hypothetical situation, Weasley, I'd have my wicked way with you, all right. But it wouldn't be against your will. By the time I had you, Weasley, you'd be very, very willing indeed. " He straightened up and smiled at her pleasantly.

"Really?" She raised an eyebrow. _I never used to do that. I wonder if I'm picking up the habit from him? _"Well, I don't believe that you'd murder Astoria, anyway. Even though she's an annoying bitch."

"Ah, but if that one act alone could make the world a better place… and I guarantee that it would…" Draco grimaced. "Then can you give me one good reason why I shouldn't off her and do humanity a favour?"

"I don't want her on your conscience," said Ginny. "That's a good reason right there."

"Perhaps you're giving me too much credit, Weasley," he said. "After all, you're assuming that I have one to begin with."

_It speaks in a very small voice. It always seems to visit me very late at night, and it whispers to me about things I've done. It reminds me of things I've tried to forget…_

Ginny shivered. Surely that had been no more than a dream. "There's at least a bit of a conscience in you, Malfoy. I think that you enjoy pretending there isn't. But underneath all those layers of cynicism, it's there."

A spasm of some emotion she couldn't name passed over his face, or might have done. "Ah, Weasley. The eternal optimist. Always hold onto your sunny beliefs, all right? They're so charming. Now let's return to London, shall we?"

Ginny could still smell the sun-warmed grasses in the cart track outside Lyme as the front room of her art studio wavered and then formed around them a few moments later. She blinked. "That has to have been the easiest Apparition of my entire life."

"Careful preparation makes all the difference," said Draco, glancing round the studio. There was a wrapped package in the corner, Ginny saw now. She wondered what it was for a moment, and then saw the _Bas-Bleu_ gallery label. She pulled off the paper as Draco removed his cloak and laid it on the table. Her _Victory_ statue emerged, and Ginny examined it critically. There really _was_ something missing from it. That damn Zenobia Smith had been right.

"What a charming little place," said Draco. "Weasley, you don't mind lying low here for a few hours, do you? I've got to go to Gringotts, and until I'm able to sort things out with the Ministry, I don't think you'd better take any chance of being seen."

"Well, I suppose you're right, but—"

"Good. I'd hate for any of those damn Aurors to get hold of you and start asking tiresome questions. This shouldn't take too long." Draco started heading for the front door. Ginny scampered after him.

"So you're coming back?"

He smiled at her. "Of course."

"But what if they come _here_? What if _Harry_ does?"

"Potter won't be coming anywhere near you," said Draco, opening the door.

"Wait, wait. What happened to him?"

She was asking empty air. How _had_ he got down the stairs so fast? She peered down the stairwell. There was no trace of Draco at all. When she looked out the hall window, the street outside was deserted. A stray copy of the _Daily Prophet_ tumbled down the sidewalk in a gust of wind, and flapped against a lamppost. She could just barely see the front page, and then only if she squinted. Was that a picture of _Hermione_? The cell phone in her pocket buzzed, and she jumped. Luna's anemic photograph waved frantically at her from the little screen.

_Using txt, owls all monitored. Harry gone. Nobody knows where._

Ginny stared at the lines of black text, her heart pounding.

_Who knows we r back?_ she typed in, her fingers shaking.

_Only me. Snzlefrps told. But aurors will know soon._

_Cant u just call me?_ Ginny punched in.

_No. Hermione can trace. Use txt._

_Hermione!_ thought Ginny. _Harry's gone, and she's on his trail…and that was definitely her on the front page of the Prophet… oh gods, now what?_

Luna's text was crawling across the little screen again. _Aurors after Draco. They will get u, force u to find him. U have bond?_

_Yes,_ Ginny typed reluctantly. _Some kind neway._

_Thought so. If u know where he is-_

The text cut off, and then reappeared.

_Dont be stupid, Ginny! Let DM go—you have enough problems-_

_Sorry. That was Dean. He wants 2 talk u out of it. I think u should find Draco. Colin 2. Whatever u do, hurry, Ginny, hurry. Luna out. _

Ginny put the phone back in her pocket, slowly. She stared out at the empty street for a moment, then shook herself. Standing where any roaming Aurors might see her was certainly the height of stupidity. She really should go back into her studio and wait. She could make herself a nice cup of tea in the little kitchenette. She could change into decent clothes; she always stashed an outfit or two in the bathroom closet. She could…

No. She couldn't. Not even though she knew how much easier it would be if she did.

Before she had a chance to think about it any further, Ginny slipped down the stairs and through a back alley. If she remembered the way correctly, then all well and good; if not, then… _Maybe I shouldn't give up on that conjugal-visits-in-Azkaban idea after all. I've certainly done enough with Draco Malfoy now to qualify for them!_ She tapped on a red brick with her wand. A goblin's face formed itself out of the mortar.

"Password, if you please," it said in a phlegmatic voice.

"Buy low, sell high, feed loan defaulters to dragons," said Ginny.

The bricks shifted themselves into a door, which swung open. Ginny breathed a sigh of relief, and darted into the Mr. Crumblygrotts's office in the side entrance of Gringotts.

The goblin rose from the chair behind his desk, an alarmed look on his face. "Ah… ah, Miss Weasley. Delighted to see you normally I would be. Today, otherwise much preoccupied I am. Perhaps a later appointment we could set—"

"No, we couldn't," said Ginny grimly. "We're going to get right down to business, Mr. Crumblygrotts. I know that Draco Malfoy is somewhere here in Gringotts, and I've got to see him."

The goblin began waving his hands frantically long before she had finished the sentence. "Oh, no. No, no, no. Impossible that is. Quite impossible. Mr. Malfoy on private family property is, and—"

"The Malfoy vault, I suppose."

"Er…" The goblin looked distinctly shifty-eyed. "Mr. Malfoy's special friend I understand you are, but…ahem…"

"Oh, I'm a bit more than that, Mr. Crumblygrotts. We share a _bond_, you see," Ginny said meaningfully. "I think that he'd want me to know exactly where he is."

"A, a bond? Under the impression I was, that a bond of that sort with Miss Greengrass he shared…"

_Ugh._ "Well, you were wrong," snapped Ginny. "He shares it with me. And if you don't tell me exactly where he is, he's going to be very displeased with you. Do you want Draco Malfoy to be displeased with you?"

The goblin gulped.

"I'd have to tell him that it was all your fault," said Ginny. "Personally, I mean."

The goblin began to turn a very disturbing shade of blue.

Knowing how to press an advantage when she saw one, Ginny leaned down across the desk. "I just _might_ even have to tell him that you addressed me by a very nasty name."

"Ah.,.. ah…" The goblin looked nervously from side to side. "_Tell_ you where Mr. Malfoy is, I cannot. On Gringotts property, not precisely he is… But if a bond truly you share, then find him you can."

"Um…" said Ginny. _Oh dear._

"True this is?"

"Uh, yes. Right."

Mr. Crumblygrotts breathed a long sigh of relief. "To search our permission you have, yes, yes. Dragons to hold their fire instructed will be… best of luck wish you we do…"

"Uh…" Somehow or other, Ginny found herself being ushered out. The door slammed in her face, and she heard the distinct sound of multiple keys being turned in the lock.

Logic. The problem had to be approached logically. This wasn't easy to do when her heart was pounding so loudly with fear that she was sure every dragon in Gringotts had to be able to hear it. They'd all been told not to incinerate her on sight, at least. That was _something_. But Hermione was certainly going to be thinking logically when she hunted Draco down, and so Ginny had to outsmart her. She did know the well-kept secret that this wasn't really as difficult to do as everyone else thought, simply because the other woman did best when it came to following lists of instructions from books. Hermione wasn't much of a creative thinker.

Ginny took one of the little lifts down to the track, got in the cart, whispered "Malfoy Vault", and held her breath. Maybe this _was_ too much of a stretch. But if she had some sort of bond with Draco, it would work, and if she didn't... _I might as well know it now._ After a moment's hesitation, the cart started with a lurch. As it careened through the darkness, swooping, rising and falling, Ginny held on and felt the thoughts buffeting about inside her head no less violently. _How in the fuck did I ever end up here, in Gringotts, on my way to Draco Malfoy, getting myself in deeper and deeper every single moment, when we'd barely even spoken to each other in our lives before two days ago? How did this happen? Why am I risking so much for him? How did he get under my skin this way? How can I get him out?_ But she already knew how pointless that last question was. She wasn't sure if she was on her way to warn him or confront him or just find out what he was doing no matter what that knowledge cost her, but she did know that she couldn't stop now.

The cart screeched to a halt at the lowest level, and so did her stomach. The worst Quidditch games she'd ever suffered through as a Chaser were nothing next to this, Ginny decided as she staggered out of the cart and stared up at the vault looming above her.

The Malfoy eagle-and-snake crest was carved into the door. This had to be it. She traced the lock, tentatively. It wasn't withering her hand off, or anything like that, which surely had to be a good sign. But there was no sign of Draco, either. Of course, he might be easily be inside it already, and she'd never know. That was the most logical conclusion…

He wasn't. She knew it instinctively. He wasn't down here at all.

Ginny drummed her fingers against the lock, thinking. The idea made no sense. Where _else_ could he be? Mr. Crumblygrotts had said he was here, after all… hadn't he? No. He hadn't. He'd just said Draco was on _private family property_. But what other Malfoy property could there be anywhere near Gringotts? She'd never heard of any family having anything besides vaults. Of course, with the Malfoys, who knew what they might have. _Private torture dungeons, probably…_ Absently, she kept drumming her fingers.

"I'll thank you to keep your hands to yourself, if you don't mind," sniffed the lock.

"Oh!" She drew her hand back. "I'm, uh, sorry… I didn't mean to…"

"I suppose that such things must be tolerated, however much one may wish otherwise." The lock made a sort of wriggling brushing-off motion. "You do share a bond with Draco Malfoy, after all."

Ginny gasped. "How did you know about that?"

The lock gave an exaggerated sigh of patience. "I am the Malfoy lock which guards the going out, and the coming in. I see the past and the present, and I know more than I speak, Ginevra Weasley."

"You even know who I am! Then you know where Draco is right now." Ginny bent down to peer at the lock. It had a long, haughty face. "You've got to tell me."

"You are fortunate that I am obliged to do so," sniffed the lock. "Otherwise, I should certainly register my objections to that particularly demanding tone in your voice."

_I might have guessed that a Malfoy lock would take this attitude,_ thought Ginny. "I'm sorry, uh, Mr. Lock," she said coaxingly. "Please, please do tell me where he is. Inside the vault, right? And you'll let me in?"

In answer, the lock reached out suddenly and grabbed her hair. She yelped and tried to pull back, but it held on stubbornly. Then it let go with a satisfied nod. "Yes. You may pass."

_I wonder why all the Malfoy locks seem to be pulling my hair?_ wondered Ginny. She stood back, waiting for the door to open. It didn't.

"What's going on?" she asked suspiciously. "I mean, Draco _is_ in here. He couldn't be anywhere else."

"Oh, but he is," said the lock. "Gringotts is one of the _soft places_, you see. Do you remember your speculation that some of these might connect to certain Malfoy properties? It was really quite prescient on your part."

"How do you know about that?" demanded Ginny.

The lock shrugged. "I have already told you. I have seen your past, Ginny Weasley, both recent and distant."

She stared hard at its long brass face, half-formed questions whirling in her mind and trying to take shape. The _things_ she could ask…

"I would not hesitate even a moment to follow Draco Malfoy, were I you," said the lock.

"Why? Can you see the future, too?"

The lock gave an odd, shrugging movement. "Of course not. However, he was following Miss Astoria Greengrass only a few minutes ago. Common sense would seem to indicate that—"

"Oh, my gods!" yelped Ginny. "Which way, which way do I go?"

In answer, the lock clicked open and part of the stone wall dissolved, revealing a long, dark corridor. Ginny started down it without a moment's hesitation. "Thanks!" she called over her shoulder.

The lock shook its head. "Ah, Weasleys. Always so dreadfully, dangerously, infuriatingly impulsive. I should have _liked_ to warn her. But then, my primary loyalty is to the Malfoys, after all."

Ginny saw faint lights ahead. Elegant rose-shaded torches in gleaming golden fixtures cast shadows down the red-papered walls of the corridor, and the uneven stone under her feet quickly smoothed out into a finely woven carpet runner over a polished wooden floor. She began to see ornately carved dark wooden doors, but when she paused to try the knobs, they were all locked. She kept reaching the dead end of one corridor only to turn straight into another that, first right, then left, then right, then left again, until she realized that she'd lost any sense of where she was and that she'd never be able to find her way out again on her own. And still there was no sign of Draco.

Finally, she stopped at the end of a corridor, panting. It looked exactly the same as all the others. If she ran to the end and then turned, she _knew_ that she'd find another just like it, and oh, gods, she was lost, completely lost. Now what? She closed her eyes, leaning against the wall, and sighed. _Roses._ She smelled roses. The scent teased at the very edges of her memory, but then, this entire strange place had been doing the same thing from the moment she'd stepped in. It was as if she'd been here at least once, long, long ago, and she could almost remember when, or how, or why. But not quite. Not quite…  
Footsteps were stealing down the corridor at the far end. They were too light and quick to be Draco's. _Astoria!_ Ginny whipped out her wand and cast an Invisibility charm on herself. Bill had _sworn_ this was always splendidly successful on Romanian wood sprites. _Of course, if it works out as well as in vino veritas did, then my hopes aren't very high._

The blonde woman stopped at a door about halfway down the hall. Ginny craned her neck around the corner, trying to see. It didn't look the same as the other doors, although she wasn't sure why. Astoria rattled the doorknob, and Ginny saw a flash of something under the perfectly manicured hand. She stuck her head out further. It was a golden key, and it seemed to have strangely sharp edges; the light winked off each one. That was the difference, Ginny realized. None of the other doors had any kind of key. Astoria sucked in her breath and tried to turn it. A bell-like jingling sound filled the corridor, but the door remained stubbornly shut. She frowned and tried harder, and the jingling grew louder and louder. Then large, knobbly fingers clamped down on her wrist. Ginny clapped her own hand over her mouth to stifle a scream.

Draco yanked Astoria to her feet and dragged her to the other side of the corridor in one movement. "Get away from there."

Astoria stumbled a bit, but Draco had already pushed her back from him, and she regained her balance quickly, brushing off her beige linen suit. "Darling, I wasn't expecting you."

"I'm quite sure you weren't. Just what do you think you're doing here?"

She looked at him appealingly. "Draco, how can you even ask me a question like that? You _know_ why I'm here. You know why I was allowed to find this place and enter it; you know what that means—" She held out her hand to him, but he stepped back.

"That's impossible." His voice was dark and cold and flat. But he was shaken; Ginny could see that. _He's afraid of something. Terribly afraid. But what?_

"It's true. Obfirmo was the one who let me in. You know what that means, Draco; it can't possibly mean anything else." Astoria's look became melting, but there was a sharp gleam in her eyes too, Ginny thought. _She's acting. She's pretending to feel something for Draco that she doesn't, and I'm not even sure what it is. And I should know what Obfirmo means; I can almost remember…_

"No," said Draco. "I don't believe it."

"And I've found the door," said Astoria, pointing. "Draco, you know very well what all of this _has_ to mean. It means that I'm—"

"_No!_" The word was torn from him.

The memory was coming back to Ginny now. A History of Magic class that she had half-slept through, and Professor Binns droning on and on about the differences between the locks used by goblins at Gringotts to protect vaults in the pre- and post- Avalon eras. He'd used the Latin word for lock. _Obfirmo._ Astoria was saying that the lock on the Malfoy vault had let her into this secret Malfoy property, just as it had let Ginny herself in. _Oh, gods._

They both stood motionless in the corridor for a moment, Astoria smiling triumphantly, Draco frozen, his head turned away from Ginny so that she couldn't see his expression. Then the tiniest hint of a bitter smile turned up one corner of his lips.

"All right, Asta," he said. "Prove it."

"I don't understand," she said. "I already have. I'm here, aren't I? There's no possible way that I would have been allowed to enter unless—"

"You were on your hands and knees in front of that door, but I didn't actually see it open for you."

"Oh. Ah…"

He leaned against the wall. "I'm waiting."

Astoria slowly knelt on the floor and reached up to the lock again. She attempted to turn the key back and forth.

"Any luck yet?" he asked. "How sad. Apparently not."

She rattled it up and down, biting her lip.

Draco gave several sighs of exaggerated impatience. "I don't have all day, you know."

Astoria gave the key a vicious twist, and Draco pulled her hand away again. "That's enough." He looked at her narrowly. "You're a fraud, Astoria."

"Obfirmo did allow me access. He did! How else would I have been able to—"

"Yes, how else would you have been able to get here? That's the question, isn't it. But we'll take that up a bit later. Obfirmo didn't let you in here, Astoria, and you know it as well as I do. Oh, you made the attempt, which was what prompted Crumblygotts to send me that owl. He knew only that the Malfoy vault had been disturbed in some way, and that was enough to bring me back here. Clever on your part, I suppose, but not nearly clever enough."

"It doesn't matter whether you think I'm clever or not, Draco Malfoy," said Astoria. "I still found a way in here, didn't I? I found that room as well, and I think I know exactly what's inside it."

"You're bluffing," Draco said in elaborately bored tones. "You don't even know where we really are in the first place. You certainly don't know what's behind that door."

"Something you'd like to hide," said Astoria. "Isn't that right, Draco?"

"Why don't you give it your best guess, Astoria?" he asked softly. "Yes. I'd love to hear that."

She pulled back from him, straightening up all the way, and her expression grew cold. Her eyes gleamed. "It's no guess, Draco. I think I know just what it is. It's that part of the Malfoy money that the Ministry was never able to trace. Rather a large part. That's it. Isn't it?"

His laugh was short and sharp. "I might have known that would be the only sort of idea that would occur to you. Well, close enough, Astoria. It's something precious, all right."

"I suppose that it may not be only money," she said. "Family heirlooms? Jewelry? Land deeds?"

Draco shook his head. "You could never begin to understand."

"Yes. I think that it's likely all those, and more," Astoria said softly. "And does the Ministry know about any of it? How about the Department of Mysteries?"

He didn't say a word.

"I didn't think so. Draco, how I managed to get in here doesn't really matter. And no, I haven't got into that room, but I don't believe that really matters either. The point is that I know it's there. You know that there's only one way to keep me from telling the Ministry about it. The paltry amount of money you offered me earlier just isn't enough."

"I see that the real Astoria Greengrass has entered the building," said Draco. "How refreshing that we're done with the romantic nonsense."

"I mean what I say, Draco," Astoria said softly. "It isn't enough. You know what my price is."

"No," said Draco. "Never."

"You don't have any choice, Draco. You never really have done. Neither have I, if it comes to that, and you know why—"

"Don't you say a word on that subject, Astoria," hissed Draco. "Not one word."

"But of course. I'll keep my mouth shut about everything. That's all included in the price, isn't it?"

"No," repeated Draco. "I won't do it. I simply won't. I will not go through with it, Astoria."

"Why not? You've always known that your little temper tantrums on the subject would make no difference at all. So what's changed?" Astoria looked at him shrewdly. "It's your little redhead, isn't it?"

"Leave Weasley out of this."

"Yes. Yes, that _is_ what's changed. You want Ginny Weasley, your little innocent. Or that's what you think she is, anyway."

"Don't talk about what you can't understand, Astoria," said Draco. "You've never been innocent."

"And you think she is?" said Astoria. "I _know_ she isn't. I've got a bit of inside information from someone who ought to know the truth—"

"Damn it, Astoria, _be quiet_; how many times do I have to tell you?"

"I think you know very well who I mean, Draco. And I can tell you that Ginny Weasley's not what you think she is."

_Oh gods. Oh no, oh no. Astoria knows. She found out about the Chamber. How? Where? When?_ Ginny's mind ran frantically through possibilities. Draco had dated her since he was eighteen years old, and he'd known Daphne before that. The Malfoys had been connected with the Greengrasses since the gods only knew when. Maybe Astoria had overheard something years before when Lucius was talking about it, or she'd snooped through old papers and read secret records… but it didn't matter how, did it? All that mattered was that she knew, and every line of her triumphant smirk confirmed every one of Ginny's fears. _Oh please, goddess, please don't let that bitch tell Draco. If she just doesn't tell him… if she only doesn't tell him… if the earth just opens up and swallows her right now, why doesn't it ever start doing that when you really want it to…_

"She's not pure, Draco," persisted Astoria. "She's not spotless. She's not innocent. You may think she's so much better than I am, but she's not. I can prove it, do you want me to prove it?"

Draco's face hardened. _Shut up,_ prayed Ginny. _Shut up, shut up, shut up, you bitch-_ But in another moment, he would know, because Astoria would tell him everything that she herself had tried so hard to hide for nearly ten years.

"I happen to know that she's already shagged Potter rotten," said Astoria triumphantly. "A number of her old boyfriends from Hogwarts as well. It all started when she was thirteen or fourteen years old, if that. She gives it away to any man at Sans and Serif who shows the slightest interest, and she's spread it about quite a number of random Muggle pubs this winter as well. She's a cheap slag, nothing more, and I have that on very good authority. So just because she spread her legs for _you_ last night at the Lyme Bay cottage, Draco, you needn't imagine that—"

Astoria was interrupted by Draco's snorts. She jerked back, staring at him.

"Laughing? You're _laughing_? I'm telling you about what a slut she really is, and you think it's funny?"

Draco leaned against a wall, wiping his eyes, apparently attempting to get his amusement under control. "You stupid bitch. You have no idea just how wrong you are. _None_, none whatsoever."

" But—but that can't be, but I heard-" Astoria stuttered.

"I couldn't give less of a fuck what you've heard," Draco said contemptuously. "Lies. All lies."

The relief sweeping over Ginny felt like the most profound that she'd ever known. _Astoria doesn't know about the Chamber. She can't know. If she did, she would've told him. And Draco… I wonder exactly why he's so completely sure that I've never… Oh._ She squirmed a bit, remembering when he'd said that he now knew that nobody had ever touched her before him. Everything had been such a blur of sexual desire and desperate craving for fulfillment that she wasn't at all sure if she'd heard most of the things she thought he'd said last night, but apparently her memory of _that_ comment had been correct.

"She's the one who lied to _you_, Draco," Astoria was saying now. "Oh, she's clever. Don't let her little Gryffindor-nobility act fool you. But she wasn't a virgin. She deceived you—"

"Keep your lying mouth shut, Astoria," said Draco, "or I will shut it for you."

How could Astoria not hear that flat, cold tone entering Draco's voice? Ginny wondered. Didn't she know him at all? But then, she wouldn't; she didn't care what he really thought or who he really was, as long as a steady stream of jewelry and expensive clothes kept coming, along with those shoes… what were those shoes he'd mentioned, Jenny Chewing-Gum or something… Ginny's mind ran crazily after the name for a few moments while Draco began steadily advancing on Astoria.

"She put on an act," Astoria insisted. "You may think you're truly bound to her now because of it, Draco, but you're not. You're bonded to me, only to me. She doesn't have any kind of real claim on you, because she _wasn't_ pure. Ginny Weasley is a whore. Nothing but a whore."

The word dropped into the silent corridor like the ripples in a pond after a stone had been thrown. Ginny knew that the ripples were made of pure terror. But Astoria clearly didn't; she didn't seem to know _anything_. She was smiling at Draco triumphantly. _Smiling!_ Ginny wanted to scream a warning, to run out from her hiding place, to do _something_, because even Astoria Greengrass didn't deserve whatever was going to happen to her now. But she was frozen in place, and she couldn't move a muscle. She could only watch.


	24. The Final Sacrifice For Now, Anyway

Okay, y'all, here it is. The last chapter and this one are really the two halves of one chapter, as readers may have figured out. If they were posted as one, though, it would have been about a forty-five page chapter. Not so good. So they were split up, but I just couldn't stand not posting the second half anymore, so at least the waiting is over. And here comes the shocking plot revelation... I think everybody will figure out exactly what it is when they read it… hold on tight… (hands out Calming Drafts and lots of chocolate. Readers can also pet the nice plot bunny… OH NOES! It is the Evil Plot Bunny of Doom with sharp fangs! Run run run! =:o

But it's all going to be okay. REALLY. (Anise gets a good head start...)

Those things which are precious are saved only by sacrifice.  
- _David Kenyon Webster_

Draco moved towards Astoria with the careless grace of a hunting panther. "What an interesting theory," he said. "You're sure about this?"

"Very sure," said Astoria.

"I wonder who originally told you all of these fascinating things." He stopped in front of her and raised his hand to caress the side of her neck.

"You must know who it was, Draco," she said.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, on reflection, I think I must."

_Lucius. It had to be Lucius Malfoy,_ thought Ginny, cringing. _Astoria must've overheard lies he told about me years ago, and then she added the rest on her own, or from who the fuck knows where. But if Draco knows for sure that his father said all these things about me, then what's he going to think? Could that mean… oh no. No._

A set of random images came to her mind then. Draco Malfoy, standing next to his father in Flourish and Blotts and looking up at the taller, older man with love and fear and worship in his child's eyes. Draco Malfoy anxiously copying his father's every movement and mannerism when he was thirteen years old and Lucius Malfoy had come to Hogwarts to icily register his official complaint over the Buckbeak incident. Draco Malfoy at barely eighteen years of age, huddled in a small group with his parents after the last battle, his mother's arm round him, looking straight at his father with disgust and hate written all over his face, and yet something more as well, so much more. Ginny hadn't understood it at the time, but she thought she did now, a little bit at least. Draco had wanted to love his father, had yearned for it, but had been rejected and rebuffed so many times that he had lost all hope of ever receiving that love. And yet there was still a tremendous urge to love, and a horrible, hopeless sorrow that love would never really be possible. And now, Astoria Greengrass had reminded Draco that Lucius Malfoy was the one who had told her that Ginny herself was a lying whore.

_Yes,_ Ginny thought with a sort of weary dread. _That just might be enough to make him believe all that shite about me after all. Even though I told Malfoy under in vino veritas that I've never been with anyone before, even though he was convinced of it because he'd touched me himself… his father said it, and that could be enough. And it would explain why he hasn't even got angry with Astoria yet for calling me a whore. Oh, fuck._

"Maybe I don't know what this place really is, Draco. But we both know very well exactly how I found out these things about Ginny Weasley," said Astoria. "And many more as well…"

_The Chamber,_ thought Ginny. _I thought this couldn't get worse, but it can and it is. Astoria does know about the Chamber after all; she's got to. Oh, why isn't the floor opening up and swallowing her yet? Shut up, you bitch, shut up! _

As if Draco had heard Ginny's words, he cut the blonde woman off. "I meant what I said, Astoria. Not a peep about anything along those lines. Even here."

"But of course, darling. That's the point, isn't it? Not one peep about anything." She looked up at him. "Have you decided to take a more reasonable attitude by now?"

"Maybe I have," said Draco. He was tapping the side of his thigh, Ginny saw, right around the area where his wand must be sheathed in its holster. As if hypnotized, she watched his long, pale fingers move. _Tap tap. Tap. Tappity tap._ _He can't believe her,_ she thought despairingly. _He just can't. Oh, Malfoy, don't believe her. I could never be as pure as you think I am, but I didn't lie to you about the only kind of purity I have left._

"Draco, you must be able to see the advantages. We'd both get a great deal out of it, you know," said Astoria.

"I can certainly see that you believe that your offer is to our mutual benefit," said Draco. _Tap. Tap. Tappita-tap._

"It always has been," said Astoria. "You do understand that, don't you, Draco? We've both always known that it was only a matter of time. And really, Draco, the Weasley girl did lie to you. You do realize that she was only trying to get her hands on the Malfoy money, right?"

"Well, that's one point of view," said Draco. "It's certainly a point of view. Of course, most people with an intelligence quotient of approximately room temperature would say the same thing about you, Astoria." _Tap, tap, taptaptap._ He moved slightly to the left, and Ginny saw that the floor was steadily dropping away behind Astoria. The advancing black space had nearly reached her feet.

"Well, just as you like, Draco," said Astoria. "But you do agree, don't you?"

"Hmm," Draco said thoughtfully. "Well, Astoria…" _Tap._ A bit more of the floor dissolved. "I'm very much afraid…" _Tap tap._ He stepped forward further, and she edged back. "That I don't agree at all."

She blinked at him. "What do you mean? You _can't_ refuse. You know what'll happen if you do."

"And you should have known what would happen if you dared to open your mouth to call Ginny Weasley a whore," said Draco, in a voice that was almost pleasant. Then he gave Astoria a little push. She stumbled, and for the first time, she looked down. Her scream was shrill and pitiful.

Ginny covered her eyes. It was cowardly and she knew it, but she was sure of what she'd see when she opened them. Astoria would be gone, and something in Draco would have broken forever, irreparably, beyond any hope of mending. But—

She winced. She could still hear that gods-awful _shrieking_.

Draco was casually holding Astoria's hands as she scrabbled at the very edge of the wooden floor, her legs kicking at the nothingness that lay below. Her face was dead-white.

"I ought to let go, you know," he said in conversational tones.

"Don't," she pleaded. "Draco, don't. Please don't. Don't do it."

"Really, you should have considered this sort of possibility to begin with. Luring me to a secret location that you certainly knew was Malfoy property, even though you didn't know anything else about it… a place where I have the power to hide any unfortunate accident that might happen… well, your intelligence has never been exactly top-drawer, but you've at least had your moments, Astoria," said Draco. "I would have expected better from you."

"You bastard!" she screamed.

"Oh, no, my parents were very much married. But I'll thank you not to insult my mother in that way."

"You miserable piece of shite—"

"Such language. And I'm afraid I don't have time to listen to a litany of my other faults," said Draco. He smothered an elaborate yawn with one hand, and Astoria screamed as she clutched onto the remaining arm that held her. Her right hand tried to grab onto empty space, and she dropped something small and square that she'd been holding in it. Almost faster than the eye could see, Draco snatched it. She gave a long, shrill wail of despair.

"I suppose I'll admit to one," Draco said thoughtfully. "When I was twelve years old, my father told me to my face that I might never amount to more than a common thief. He said it in front of a shopkeeper in Diagon Alley, actually. I'm sure he told you about that charming fact at some point in the past. I've managed to elude that lovely prediction, but I must say, I've always kept my eye on the main chance." He held up the little square thing.

"This is how you really found your way in here, isn't it, Astoria? Did you pick my pocket, or did I drop it on the ground during the storm? What's the matter, sweetheart—Kneazle got your tongue? Oh, I suppose it's not really important how you got it. You've always been one for listening at keyholes, which I imagine is how you learned that it was a Portkey to begin with. But how terribly disappointing that you didn't manage to get here because of any sacred bond of mystical love with me." He shook his head in mock disappointment.

"Nobody—could ever have anything like that- with you, Draco Malfoy," panted Astoria. "You can't feel love. You're not—capable of it."

"Talk about the pot calling the kettle black," he said.

"I suppose you think—that you could feel love for Ginny Weasley? Is that it?"

"That's none of your affair," said Draco. "Anyway, it's entirely possible that quite soon, you won't need to worry about that—or anything else—ever again."

Astoria struggled for a bit while Draco watched her coolly, and then she gave up. "I could almost- feel sorry for her," she finally gasped. "She doesn't know anything about what you are. There's _nothing_ good in you, Draco Malfoy. Nothing at all. I suppose you've- convinced your little redhead- that you've got some sort of noble quality hidden deep down, but I know you haven't. You're rotten and corrupt to the core. Under all those layers of cynicism, there's nothing that's good. There's only evil."

"You're entitled to your opinion," said Draco. "Of course, nobody's particularly interested in it. And something tells me that soon, your ability to express it will be entirely gone."

One by one, his long, knobbly fingers were beginning to let go of Astoria's hand.

Ginny tried desperately to move her feet, her legs, her arms, _something_, but every bit of her seemed frozen into place. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. She could only make a tiny, terrified noise. Draco turned his head just slightly, and Ginny knew instantly that he had heard her. He stared at her for a long, long moment, and there was not a single doubt in Ginny's mind that he saw her as well.

Draco turned back to Astoria. His face twisted into an expression that Ginny knew she couldn't have named, no matter how long she tried. His hands twitched. Then, very slowly and deliberately, he pulled Astoria up to her feet on the solid part of the floor.

"I suppose you think that like knows like, Asta," he said. "But you'll never know me."

She stared back at him.

"Do get back from that edge," he said. "Carelessness causes the most unfortunate accidents."

"You—you're not going to—"

"What a drama queen you are," he said. "You can't imagine that I was ever going to put myself to the trouble of actually killing you. There would have been ever so many tedious questions later on."

Astoria took a long time to straighten her clothing and smooth her hair. "I don't know what I was thinking when I wore linen today. It wrinkles so dreadfully." She gave him a long, cold look. "No, there wouldn't have been any questions, Draco. Nobody knew I was here. I suppose that you're right. It was very stupid of me."

"Not nearly as stupid as saying what you did about Ginny Weasley," Draco said, and his voice was suddenly made of pure ice. "Never do it again. Do you hear me? Never. Never, ever call her by that filthy name again."

"All right. I won't, then, if it means so much to you. It isn't as if it makes any difference now." She appraised him, narrowing her eyes. Then she gave him a mocking smile. "Draco, you think that you didn't get rid of me when you could have done because you've got some deep quality of goodness after all, don't you? But that isn't the case at all. The real reason is that you're weak. Just like your father always said."

Draco's face darkened. "This is the last time I'm going to tell you to shut your mouth, Astoria."

"He told me that oh, so many times, you know." She mimicked Lucius Malfoy's tones. "'I'm so dreadfully disappointed in that boy. The tendency came down through Narcissa, I'm afraid. Weakness in a Malfoy—just imagine—I don't know what I'll—"

"Get out," spat Draco. "Get away from me."

"It's a bit late to tell me that," Astoria said softly. "You don't have any choice in the matter, Draco. You never did. You've known that all along."

"I don't need you to tell me about my choices, Astoria," said Draco. "Now get out of here. Every second of your continued presence pollutes this place just a bit more." He reached out his hands, pushing her away, and Ginny realized that Draco was steering Astoria in the opposite direction from where she herself was standing.

"I don't have to tolerate you putting your hands on me yet, Draco," Astoria said icily, turning round. Her eyes widened in shock. Ginny groaned.

"Your little redhead has been here all along, hasn't she?" demanded Astoria. "She's heard everything! If you think I'm going to permit her to go her merry way, knowing what she does—"

She drew her wand before she had even finished the sentence and pointed it at Ginny, her face a mask of pure hatred. "_Obliviate!_!"

"_Pondero!_" cried Ginny, just a fraction of a second earlier. Astoria's charm bounced off her wand and flew back at the blonde woman's chest. She fell back with a look of total surprise. Then her eyes went blank.

"Very nice, Weasley," said Draco. "A good Reflecting hex. Simple, yet effective." He murmured something in Astoria's ear and gave her a little push. She wandered down the corridor and disappeared around a corner.

"What… what's going to happen to her now?" asked Ginny.

"She'll emerge on the other side, none the worse for wear. Unfortunately, the Memory charm won't last more than an hour or two on its own." Draco grimaced. "You might as well come all the way down here."

Shakily, Ginny walked down to the corridor towards him.

"That's the worst excuse for an Invisibility charm I've ever seen, by the way. I really didn't need to do anything more than to look directly at you in order to find you, and neither did she. Where on earth did you learn it?"

"I got it from Bill," Ginny admitted.

"Ah. Well, your brother's spells leave a bit to be desired, in my opinion."

Ginny had to agree, but she doubted that this was really the time to critique them. _Bill is never going to hear the end of it from me,_ she thought grimly. _That's assuming I ever get out of here!_ The black, empty space in the floor still yawned behind them, and she stared at it in horror. Draco passed his wand over it and muttered something, and it closed up. _But it was there,_ thought Ginny. _I saw it, and I won't forget it._

"You don't listen to me, do you?" Draco asked Ginny gently, sheathing his wand. "I told you to stay in your studio."

"I couldn't," she said.

"Yes… I suppose that maybe you really couldn't. How did you get in?"

"The lock on the Malfoy vault. Obfirmo, I suppose he's called."

Draco sucked in his breath. "_Obfirmo_ let you in?"

"Y-yes," stammered Ginny. "He said we had some sort of bond—"

Draco reached out to pull Ginny up to him, and her legs threatened to give out. She leaned against the wall and winced as she felt the sharp edge of the golden key just barely graze her leg. Draco looked down at it, then back up at Ginny, intently scanning her face.

"Weasley, do you know where we are?"

"No," she said, pinned by his eyes, feeling exactly as if she were still under _in vino veritas_ and had no choice but to answer any question he asked her. And it was the truth. She had a haunting almost-memory of this place, like something half-forgotten from a dream. But she didn't _know_ anything.

"Have you ever been here before?"

"No," she said, and that was true as well. A half-forgotten dream hardly qualified. "Malfoy, where _are_ we?"

He looked at her narrowly, and she was sure that he wasn't going to answer her at all. "On Malfoy property, of course," he said. "But you already knew that, didn't you?"

"Well, both of you said that. But where _is_ it? Are we underneath Gringotts, or something?"

"So you really don't know?"

"Of course I don't know."

He examined her face by the light of one of the orange lamps fixed high into the wall. Then, suddenly, he relaxed. "No. I don't think you do. You're telling the truth."

"Why would I lie about something like that?"

"Why indeed," said Draco. He toyed with his wand in its holster, still looking at her appraisingly.

Ginny shivered. "Thank all the gods that Astoria won't remember any of this. I mean… she won't, will she?"

"In about an hour, I'm afraid that the Memory charm really will start to wear off," said Draco. "Unless something else is done, that is."

"What are you talking about? I do know how to cast a decent one, you know. I didn't learn that from Bill."

"I'm sure you do know how, Weasley. The problem is that Memory charms only work on the pure of heart, and that lets Astoria right out."

"Fuck! What do we do _now_?"

"'We' won't do anything. I'll take care of it. In the meantime…" Draco drummed his fingers on the holster over his wand. _Tap. Tap. Tap._

"I suppose that lets you out as well, Malfoy, when it comes to Memory charms," muttered Ginny.

"Perhaps. They're only truly effective on certain people. It takes a certain purity of heart…"_Tap. Tapitty tap._

Ginny barely even heard his last words. Wave after wave of something like memory was washing over her, and yet she couldn't really remember anything at all. There were only disconnected images flashing past her inner eye, and those were the last ones she would have ever wanted to remember. _The Chamber. Lying bound and helpless on the floor under his hands. Silly little girl, I became quite bored with having to listen to your foolish little problems. But you will serve your purpose, in time, Ginny Weasley. You will play your part in my plans. He ought to have been Tom Riddle, but he spoke in Lucius Malfoy's voice. Nightmares. Only nightmares._

Draco looked at her sharply. "What's the matter, Weasley?"

"Nothing," she said. "Only I hate memory charms, Malfoy." She shivered deeply.

"How would you know? Have you ever been Obliviated?"

"I suppose that if I had been, I couldn't very well remember it." Ginny stared at the wall. Surely the patterns in the red velvet paper weren't moving on their own? No. That was only a trick of the faint light. "But I do hate them. You can't imagine how much."

"I didn't know your feelings about that sort of charm," she heard him say in a low voice. "I had no idea, Weasley."

"Never mind. It's not important, why would that be important?" She turned back to him and tried to smile, but the attempt didn't get very far. "I don't see why you'd bother to Obliviate me anyway, Malfoy. Goddess knows, I didn't see anything much. Astoria Greengrass acted like the money-hungry bitch she is and she tried to extort even more cash out of you, but you didn't put up with it. Then, well… you frightened her a bit," she said rather lamely. "That's all. Of course you wouldn't have actually _done_ anything to her."

"You're right," said Draco. "It's a pity that she won't remember any of it, because it would serve as a much-needed lesson. But I certainly wasn't going to go through with it. You heard her charming theory as to my reasons, of course."

"She said it was because you're weak. But she was wrong, Malfoy. Wrong. I'm sure your father never said that about you—"

"Oh, but he did," Draco said without any change in expression. "He said it to my face."

Ginny remembered how nobody in her family had known what to do with her, or how to treat her, after the Chamber of Secrets. Her mother bustled about and brewed too many Calming drinks, and whispered in corners to distant relatives who came to visit. She firmly stated once that they were all to forget it, and then never spoke another word about it. Her father was awkward and too quiet, and never talked about it either. Her brothers all pretended that nothing had happened at all. She had felt cut off in some way from all of them ever since she was eleven years old because of it. _But at least they would never have done anything like that._

"Then your father was wrong as well," said Ginny. She swallowed hard. Whether asking the next question was a good idea or not, she knew that she had to do it. "Malfoy, Astoria heard all those… things… that she said about me from Lucius. Didn't she?"

He turned on her swiftly. "What makes you think that?"

"How else would she know them?" she countered. "Come on, Malfoy. I don't see any other way. She must have overheard him saying them years ago. I'm sure that's why she said something about my… um… starting to do them when I was so young. I was wondering if, um… if he ever said them where _you_ could hear them."

"Yes," said Draco. "He certainly did." He had a very odd look on his face. "My father had… certain plans, let's just say. Some parts of them seemed to be at variance with others, but they really weren't." He looked away from her slightly. "He wanted to turn me against you, Weasley. He wanted me to distrust you. It was to his advantage for me to believe that you weren't pure or innocent or untouched. He almost convinced me, many times. But…" He took a curl of her hair between his fingers. "I never really could quite believe it."

"What are you doing, Malfoy?" whispered Ginny.

"I'm telling you what I thought, Weasley. And why," said Draco. "I could see the innocence in your eyes, always. And after last night, of course, I know that it's true." He came closer still. Ginny could smell the chocolate scent coming off his skin. She heard herself giving a long sigh, and she closed her eyes.

"I've touched you now, and I know that nobody's ever touched you before me," he murmured. "Nobody's ever laid hands on your naked body, except for me. Nobody's ever made you writhe, and moan, and cry out in pleasure and passion except for me. Only me. That's true. Isn't it?"

"Yes," she said. They were so close, now, that she could feel the heat of his body. "Malfoy—"

"Shh." He laid his finger over her lips. She reached up to pluck it off, and at the scorching feel of his hands, she lost her balance and swayed like a willow in a high wind. He caught her in his arms. His head came down and hers tilted up, as if drawn by some irresistible force.

"I want to kiss you," he said softly.

"You're asking for permission to kiss me, after everything we've already done?" asked Ginny. Her heart was thudding so loudly that she could barely hear her own words.

"Yes. I have no right to do it, and I know it. So I'm asking."

"You mean… because of that bond with Astoria? Is that what you mean? That's the one you told me about this morning, isn't it?"

Draco hesitated. "You could say that, I suppose. I'm not free, Weasley. I am tied in ways you don't know about. But I want to kiss you more than you can imagine. May I kiss you?"

"I never thought you'd ask for permission," said Ginny.

"You don't know about the choices I've made," he said, and that chilled Ginny, somehow, because it didn't seem to be an answer to her earlier question, and yet he seemed so very sure that it was. "Now may I kiss you?"

"Yes," said Ginny, and she reached up, and their mouths met. The kiss was inexpressibly sweet and it went on and on, and they tasted each other with lips and sliding tongues and his big hands held her up to him and she pressed herself against his body, her softness against his hardness, meeting and matching. It was nothing like anything that had happened last night, Ginny thought fuzzily, nothing. Somehow, something had changed. She didn't feel overwhelmed by any of his deliberate, exceptional skills. He wasn't dominating her. He wasn't overpowering her. All of that had been sinfully, shockingly pleasurable. But this… _What is it?_

Ginny was still lost in the kiss, the question puzzling itself out in the very back of her mind, when he let her go. "I was the very first to give you all of those things, Ginny Weasley," he said quietly. "I'll always remember that. Now let's get back to your studio."

She didn't want to go back. She wanted to stay, and somewhere in the back of her mind, a thought had been forming itself. _I wonder, could I open that door. Astoria couldn't open it a crack, but could I?_ She wanted to find out. But before she could even protest, Draco took her arm, and the red-papered walls swam around them and dissolved into the bright noon sunlight spilling in through the window.

Draco sagged against the table, putting a hand to his forehead. For the first time, Ginny saw how pale and exhausted he really was.

"Sit down, Malfoy," she said. "I'll make some coffee—"

He cut her off. "No."

"Or I suppose you could have a lie down in the other room, if you like." She tried not to blush. The kiss was still tingling on her lips, and she could taste him in her mouth. "There's a little bed. I sleep here sometimes."

"I can't do that either."

"Are you going to stand in the middle of the floor all day long, then? You certainly can't go out of this building. The Aurors are all looking for you. Harry's disappeared, remember? Obviously, they all suspect you had something to do with it, as if they didn't have enough reason to hunt you down anyway. I mean…" Her voice faltered. "You told me you didn't, and I do believe you, but… you _didn't_, right?

One corner of his mouth turned up, but the half-smile did not reach his eyes. "Do you think I've done away with him after all, Weasley?"

"Uh… Malfoy, I know you wouldn't do anything like that. Don't be stupid."

"You know that I wouldn't do anything like that," he repeated without inflection. "I think I'd like that coffee now."

Ginny fumbled with the coffeemaker in the little kitchenette. _Malfoy wouldn't. Would he? Would he…_ No. He could have let Astoria Greengrass fall to her death, and he hadn't done it.

She looked back through the crack in the door between the kitchenette and the front room, and saw Draco turning something small over in his hands. _Magnificat,_ she whispered, tapping her wand against her forehead, and her vision zoomed in on what he held. It was a shrunken crate, and she knew almost at once that it wasn't the one she'd opened the night before. The markings were different, the wood was much darker, and it was strapped all the way round with iron bands. _It's the first crate of the two,_ she realized. _It's got to be. That's what Astoria stole. It's what she was holding. It's the Portkey to the place where we all were… wherever that was._

Ginny came back in with the two coffee cups and put them on the table. Draco still hadn't sat down in a chair, she saw.

"I already told you, Weasley," said Draco, taking a long drink of coffee. "I didn't lay a finger on Saint Potter. He's all right."

"Then you'll just stay here with me," said Ginny.

He didn't reply. The room grew more silent and still with each passing moment, she thought. She could just barely hear the ticking of the clock.

"You'd just better lay low here until everything's cleared up," said Ginny. "I mean, I'm sure it will be, but it's going to take some time. Right?"

Draco put his cup down on the table. That hardly seemed to make a sound, either. "I can't. I have to go away. Now. Immediately. I can't wait even another ten minutes."

"You have to—what do you mean, go away?" echoed Ginny.

"Just what I said. I can't stay here."

Ginny stared at him. "But that's absolutely mad! Why would you leave-" She stopped. She'd been about to say _why would you leave me_. She wouldn't, couldn't say that. _Not unless he says that he won't leave me first._ "Why would you leave someplace that's safe?"

He swallowed hard. "Because I have to. Because there's no other choice, Weasley. Absolutely none."

"But.. but what are you going to _do_?"

He looked her full in the face, and any words that she might have said simply died on her lips. She had never seen anything like the torment in his eyes.

"I'm going to marry Astoria Greengrass," he said.

Ginny stared at Draco. She hadn't heard him correctly. That was the only conceivable explanation. He could not, _could not_ have just told her that he was going to marry Astoria Greengrass.

"What?" she asked.

"You know very well what I just said to you, Weasley." His voice became more and more remote, as he were retreating from her even as he stood very still on the other side of the table, looking at her. Tick, tick, tick went the clock, slicing each individual second down to the one when he would leave her. "And we're both going away," the shadow of Draco's voice added. "I don't know if I'll ever come back. It would be better for you if I didn't."

_Better for you if I didn't. Better for you. If I didn't. Better. For you… if I didn't come back…_

He reached out his hand to her. Dimly, she wondered how he could seem to be moving away, away, always away, a million miles away, even as she saw that hand coming closer and closer.

"I release you from any bond we had," he said softly. "And you have no idea how very lucky you are to be free of me."

His fingers stopped millimetres from the side of her cheek, and his beautiful face, only inches from hers, might as well have been on the other side of the earth. _If I lean forward and touch him,_ realized Ginny, _if I move just the slightest bit, I can bring him back into my world._ Their eyes met, and she knew that he knew it too. They stood staring at each other, balanced on a razor's edge. Then he stepped back. She stayed in the same place. But she had not stepped forward. She had waited just a moment too long.

"Goodbye, Ginny Weasley," said Draco. "This is probably the only good thing I've ever done for you."

It was the last sentence that did it, she decided later. It sounded exactly like something that Harry would have said to her.

She picked up the coffee cup and threw it straight at Draco as he walked out the door. Her aim was just as good as it had been during all her years as the Hogwarts Chaser, and it hit the back of his perfect blond head. He winced, but he kept going. The cup bounced off and crashed against her _Victory_ statue. It shattered into pieces as the door slammed shut.  
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	25. Bad News and Ministry Encounters

A/N: Thanks to readers and reviewers, especially opaque girl and Princess Phoenix Tears.

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~Anaïs Nin

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Ginny ran to catch the closing door just an instant too late; she almost, _almost_ caught the edge of it in her hands, but it just slipped past her fingers. She reached down for the knob. Draco's voice echoed back to her just one last time, and even though Ginny didn't speak a word of Danish, she had a very bad feeling about what this spell might mean.

"_Klokken høre op!_"

_Oh, shite,_ she thought.

When she opened her eyes again, late afternoon sunlight was slanting in through the window. _A Time Stopping Hex. I might've known._

"Malfoy, you bastard," Ginny said aloud. She scrambled up and ran out into the hall, already knowing that she was much too late, and that she'd only find it empty. But no. It _wasn't_ too late to find him, because she wouldn't let it be.

The stairs were empty too, and the vestibule of the building, and the street outside, and her anger grew as she paced up and down the sidewalk. Draco couldn't _do_ this to her! He couldn't threaten to… he couldn't scare her this way… because he wasn't actually going to do what he said, of course; he couldn't. That was just mad. Something had been started between the two of them, and although Ginny couldn't begin to understand what it really was, she felt right down to the marrow of her bones that it was a beginning that had gone too far to go back from. What had happened the night before… She stopped walking for a moment, and shivered where she stood. He had opened her up like a flower unfurling, and he had played deliciously among her trembling petals. He had opened her body to sensual pleasure, and she knew that she could never return to a closed, budlike innocence. She was his now in some way, and surely, surely he was hers, wasn't he? He couldn't go to Astoria Greengrass. He just couldn't.

_But where is he? Where? Gods, where?_

A male figure was moving towards her at the end of the block. The sun blinded her so that she couldn't see who he was. Her heart flew up to her throat, and she ran towards him.

"Ginny! I've been looking for you _everywhere_. Where the hell have you been? Do you know how _worried_ I've been? I've been searching and searching everywhere, and here I find you wandering about on the street looking like you just escaped from St. Mungo's and—"

_No chocolate. And the voice is wrong. Not Malfoy. It's not Draco Malfoy._ The figure came closer and closer, and she sagged with disappointment into Colin Creevey's arms.

"Oh. It's only you," she said.

"Nice to see you, too," said Colin. "For Merlin's sake, Ginny, let's get off the street."

"I can't," said Ginny. "I'm still—"

"You can, and you'd better do it right now," said Colin. "I'm surprised the Aurors didn't find you before I did. I'm surprised they didn't find _me._" He pulled her into a side alley and stabbed his finger into a copy of the _Daily Prophet_, pushing it into her face. "Look, I'm sorry to break it to you like this if you don't already know, Gin, but there's no time to beat around the bush- haven't you seen _this?_

Hermione's photograph stared out from the front page, her big brown eyes tearful, her face resolute and determined. It was the same paper she'd seen blowing around on the street while she was looking out the window a couple of hours earlier.

_Ginny Weasley: Innocent Ministry Official's Daughter, or Draco Malfoy's Deadly, Mysterious Mistress?_

Dubious damsel Ginny Weasley led Aurors on a terrifying chase through Gringotts bank last night, culminating in the escape of wanted suspect Draco Malfoy. Sinister former Death Eater Draco and his partner in crime, the pretty, loose-living Ginny, then vamoosed to Malfoy property on the Dorset coast, near Lyme Bay. Seven Aurors followed them, but only six came back. Heroic Harry Potter's whereabouts still remain unknown.

"We're making a desperate appeal for help," said the brave, plucky Hermione Granger, Harry's trusted Auror sidekick and very, very close personal friend. "If anyone has the slightest idea where Harry might be—even the vaguest clue—we need to know. We still haven't been able to learn conclusively what Draco Malfoy might be capable of, and as much as I'd hate to think that Ginny Weasley could have any part in his plans, that simply can't rule that out yet." Neither can we, Hermione! And as much as this reporter hates to besmirch an innocent girl's name by such insinuations, it hardly seems necessary to fret too much about that possibility in this case. Considering her shockingly long history of changing paramours more quickly than she does last night's knickers, even the dangerous Draco just might find himself double-crossed-

Ginny put the paper down, staring out into the empty streets.

"Ginny, they're out searching for you. They've got to be. You have to lay low."

"Hermione said that she _still_hadn't been able to learn anything. She said she couldn't rule out anything _yet_," she said, scanning the horizon as if it held answers it refused to reveal.

"Right, right, that's exactly what she said. Listen, Ginny, where were you before?"

"Up in my art studio," she said absently. "And that article didn't say a word about where Draco was now. Did it?"

"No. I suppose it didn't. Ginny, I think you'd better go back up there. They're probably looking for me as well. I'm coming with you. Can't I come with you?"

"No, Colin, you can't."

"I can't? What do you mean, I can't?" he asked incredulously. "I'm out on the streets risking life and limb for you, and you won't even hide my arse from the Department of Mysteries for a few hours? Doesn't friendship mean anything anymore to you?"

"Of course it does," said Ginny. "That's why you're coming with me to the Ministry, Colin. I think they're holding Draco Malfoy there."

"Oh, no. No, no," said Colin. "You're not dragging me into this one, Gin. I don't care what you say, you're _not_ talking me into this perfectly mad scheme!"

It was a good thing, then, Ginny decided, that no talking was required. And surely a few hexes didn't matter much between friends.

"I don't know how I always end up doing these things for you," said Colin, rubbing his bum a few minutes later.

"You don't have to do anything," said Ginny. "You're providing moral support. And shh. Whisper, please. You don't know who could be listening."

"Where the hell are we?"

"Somewhere in the Subfiling Department of the Undersecretary of the Legal-Type Division of Various and Largely Uninteresting Wizarding Licensures on the ninth floor of the Ministry. _Shhh._" Ginny took his hand as they crawled through a miniature tunnel of teetering files in manila envelopes.

"I don't understand how we were able to get in here. We're right next to the Department of Mysteries, aren't we? You're not supposed to be able to Apparate in here."

"Um…" Ginny felt rather uncomfortable. "It's through a blood-bond. My brother Percy is a junior barrister here." It didn't seem necessary to add that she hadn't talked to him in several months.

"Ugh. I think a _spider_ just crawled down my back. The things I do for you… Ginny, do you honestly think that they're holding Malfoy here? They didn't exactly say it in that article."

"But Hermione said that she hadn't learned anything about what he was doing _yet_," said Ginny, swatting away sticky cobwebs. She had an uneasy feeling that Colin might have been right about that spider. "What's the point of saying that, unless she's in the process of getting information from him?"

"I suppose that you might have a point," Colin admitted.

"And the Department of Mysteries doesn't have to answer to anyone for what it does," said Ginny. "Or for the methods it uses." Even though the filing room was stuffy and hot, she shivered, picturing Draco being questioned by Aurors. _What if they're using Veritaserum? Or what if it's… worse? Oh gods, oh gods. Could they be using Cruciatus now? No. Maybe. I don't know anymore. Oh gods, oh gods…_ Draco's beautiful body writhing on the floor, his bright hair sticking to his forehead, wet with sweat, his low melodious drawling voice cracking in a scream—

And then she heard _herself_ scream, involuntarily, because something popped up in front of her face. It was completely surrounded by cobwebs, so it clearly had to be the biggest spider she'd ever seen in her life, at least a foot wide and covered with prickly hair, all its legs waving at her.

"Ergh! Squash it, Gin!" she heard Colin groan. She screamed and batted at it and scrambled backwards and fell over onto him, and a tower of cardboard boxes teetered and crashed. She covered her head with her arms as they fell around both of them.

Dead silence. Then a high, screechy, very aggrieved-sounding voice spoke.

"I must say, I don't believe that I have ever been so insulted in all my life."

"Do Acromantulas talk?" Colin whispered in Ginny's ear.

"I don't think so," Ginny whispered back.

"Maybe that wasn't actually a spider."

Ginny didn't answer, but the idea was starting to occur to her as well, uncomfortably.

"I'm only trying to do my job, I'll have you know. And to be randomly _attacked_- one would think one would be safe on one's way to Subsystem A of Filing Cabinet B-6 of the Division of Wizards' Licenses! But apparently not."

Ginny peeked just slightly over the edge of a box. A very short, squat filing-elf was brushing itself off with one hand and holding a manila folder with the other. "At any rate, I'm here to deliver a copy of a completed license," it said in very put-upon tones. "That is, if nobody has any particular plans to begin chasing me about with a flyswatter, or anything of what nature. Because Merlin knows, I wouldn't want to interrupt that. Only do be good enough to let me get a headstart, Weasley."

"I'm quite sure it was no more than an honest mistake, Arachnos. Hold on for ten minutes or so, if you'd be so kind," said a voice. A very _familiar_ voice, thought Ginny.

"Hmph." The elf gave a snort and stomped down the aisle, giving Ginny a long, meaningful look. His face _was_ almost completely covered in very short, stiff hair, she saw, which made her feel marginally better about the mistake.

A heavier pair of footsteps approached. She ducked back under the box just a little too late; hands picked it up off her head even as she tried to pull it down. An exasperated sigh. That sounded familiar too, even though she hadn't heard it in a long time. Too long, she realized guiltily.

"Ginny, what have you done this time?" asked Percy Weasley, peering down at her.

She stood up and brushed herself off with all the dignity she could muster. "I'm trying to get to the Department of Mysteries."

"Yes, well, I didn't exactly delude myself into thinking that you were coming to visit _me_," snapped Percy. "It's not as if anyone in the family's bothered themselves to do that anytime too terribly recently."

She looked up at him, impeccably dressed in long black robes, not a dark auburn hair out of place, his sherry-brown eyes guarded and unwelcoming, or at least they seemed that way to her. His words hurt, the more so because they'd hit their mark. How _dare_ he take that tone with her, anyway.

"You haven't exactly visited me either, Percy," she said. "Or owled. And you realize that we do use email at Flourish and Blotts, right?"

"Yes—well—" He looked a bit flustered. "You realize how incredibly dangerous it is to attempt unauthorized visits to this department at the best of times, don't you?"

"I'm fully aware of that fact, Percy," said Ginny. "I needed to get in here, and there was no other way than a blood-bond Transport spell."

"To get in?" Percy stared at her in exactly the same way that he had when he'd caught her climbing onto the roof when she was eight years old and she'd explained that she was trying to catch Fizzle-Footed Starflyers with a butterfly net, because she wanted to try out the idea that Luna Lovegood had told her during summer camp just a few weeks before. He crouched down to whisper in her ear. "Ginny, you simply don't know what's going on here, and I haven't time to explain it to you now. But the best thing that you can do is to crawl back under those boxes with Colin Creevey and Apparate back to wherever you came from as quickly as possible. I've been trying to find out exactly what's going on all day long, and the conclusion I've come to is that it can only be—"

Light suddenly shone in Ginny's face from ahead, behind, all sides; it seemed to come from everywhere, light stabbing from a thousand wands, and then one wand was being pushed in her face, and she saw another face illuminated above it. It was white and strained-looking, the brown eyes enormous and triumphant. _Hermione._ Other hands reached down and pulled her up, and she was confronting the face.

"I told you that she'd come," Hermione said to the circle of Aurors.

So before Percy had even finished his sentence, Ginny knew just how it had to end. There was a long, dragging moment of silence, so she thought that he might as well end it. But he didn't, so she did it for him, in her own mind.

_A trap_.

"Where is he?" Ginny asked, without preamble.

"If you're talking about Harry," Hermione said to her, "I was hoping that you could tell us that." Her voice trembled with an edge of something like controlled hysteria.

"Of course I don't know where Harry is," said Ginny. "You know bloody well who I mean. Where's Draco Malfoy? You have him here, don't you? Completely illegally, I suppose?"

"We don't have him here at all," said Hermione.

"You're lying," said Ginny.

"I assure you, I'm not," said Hermione.

Her eyes didn't even flicker. Ginny had a horrible feeling that she was telling the truth, and that Draco really _wasn't_ here. _Then where is he? Did he actually go to Astoria, and… no. No, it can't be true. I won't let it be true._

"You wanted me to think he was," said Ginny. "You thought I'd come for him."

"Yes," said Hermione. "Yes, and that's just what you did."

_Oh, fuck._ "I can't believe you'd stoop so low—"

"Save it. You know where Harry is, don't you, Ginny?" demanded Hermione. "Because Malfoy knows, and he told you."

"He didn't tell me anything, and I don't know!"

"But _he_ knows." Hermione pounced on her words.

_Shite! They wouldn't even have to use Cruciatus to get the truth out of me,_ thought Ginny. _Just let me run my mouth long enough!_

"Malfoy doesn't know a thing," Ginny said, with much more firmness than she felt.

"I think he does. I wonder how long it would take him to come back to the Ministry if he knew that _you_ were being held here."

"Forever," said Ginny. "He wouldn't come here at all." _She's bluffing. She's got to be bluffing. _

"I think he would. And if he did, then we'd find out what he knows," said Hermione. "No matter what we'd have to do—"

"As Ginny Weasley's designated legal counsel, I am very interested to hear that an official Ministry representative seems to be threatening the illegal use of coercive interrogative methods," Percy said in a clipped voice, rising from the pile of boxes. He stepped in front of Ginny, looming above Hermione.

"Er—yes! Yes. What he said. I'm very official as well," said Colin rather feebly, brushing off cobwebs and grimacing at the occasional skittering spider. "Well, I never pretended to be terribly brave, you know," he added in a whispered aside to Ginny. "But I didn't get more than a meter or so away before I just had to come back. Luna never would've let me hear the end of it."

Hermione blanched a bit, but recovered quickly. "Er—Weasley. Creevey. I didn't know you were there— but I wasn't even talking about Ginny, I was saying what would happen if Malfoy turned up—"

"I wasn't aware that two separate sets of wizarding laws had been passed, Granger," said Percy. "I don't see what else would lead you to believe that you could make such threats."

Hermione flushed. "I wasn't making any threats."

"I'm extremely pleased to know that," said Percy. "I'd hate to think that any branch of the Ministry was stooping to such tactics."

"Yes—fine—well, all right, then, Weasley, what do _you_ know about Harry's whereabouts?" she asked rather defiantly. "And what about Malfoy- have you seen Malfoy?"

Ginny's spirits sank even lower. _Hermione doesn't know,_ she realized. _She really has no idea where Malfoy is._

"I certainly haven't seen either one of them, or I would have informed someone in the Ministry long before now, I'm sure," said Percy.

"Maybe we're not so sure that we can trust Weasleys to pass on accurate information anymore," snapped Hermione.

"And maybe I'm not so sure that I can trust the Department of Mysteries to run proper investigations anymore," said Percy. "Tell me, Granger, how exactly would you interrogate Malfoy if you did manage to get hold of him? Were you planning to use Veritaserum? I'd heard that your department introduced that without authorization into an investigation just last week. Lucky that Shacklebolt never found out about that one, wasn't it?"

Hermione bit her lip. "I didn't have anything to do with that."

"But you seem to have known all about it. Doesn't it bother you in the least? It seems to me that you used to possess a higher sense of ethics, Granger," said Percy. "At least that's what I recall from your time at Hogwarts."

"I—never mind! I don't need to defend myself to you," Hermione said passionately." My only concern is finding Harry. That's all I want. That's all I care about. Not that it seems to matter much to you! The Weasleys all rather seem to have become former-Death-Eater-lovers instead. Purebloods stick together, don't they?"

"I haven't said that I would throw a Water hex on any Malfoy if he were on fire in front of me," Percy said coldly. "But I defend the law, Granger. I always will. I won't allow you to subvert it in this way, not where anyone in concerned."

Ginny felt Colin yanking at her sleeve. "Maybe this would be a good time to go," he hissed. "I think we could escape under all these boxes while they're arguing about wizarding law. I'm _really_ not very brave, you know… I never have been…"

"Shut it," she hissed back, giving him a shake.

"We haven't broken any laws," Hermione said hotly. "And we're not going to!"

"No, you're not going to, because Ginny is coming with me," Percy said flatly. "You have no right to either question her or keep her here."

"Oh, yes we do, and we will." Hermione raised her chin, and her voice became defiant."If we have any chance of luring Malfoy to the Ministry by holding Ginny, then we've _got_ to keep her here. This could save Harry. I won't give up that chance. I simply won't. I suppose I can't expect you to take a reasonable view of this, Weasley, but I'm afraid you have no choice in the matter." She nodded to the Aurors surrounding her. "Smith, Pugsley…?"

The two Aurors stepped forward to flank Ginny, one on either side. In another instant, they'd pin her between them. They'd take her away to the Department of Mysteries and keep her in a small room, waiting until Draco Malfoy came for find her. And maybe, just maybe, he would. And then they would lock him away and learn what he knew. _No matter what we'd have to do…_

Without a second thought, Ginny dove under the pile of boxes. She tunneled through as fast as she could, headed for the stairs, praying that Percy and Colin would have enough sense to go in the other direction. Her brother's grim face confronted her as soon as she opened the door to the stairwell, of course, but she ducked under one of his arms before he could grab at her robes, and then she started darting down the stairs, pulling a more-than-willing Colin with her. The odd filing-elf was still waving a copy of the license at Percy, she saw out of the corner of one eye, but he pushed it away and started after her, several sets of footsteps clattering just behind him.

"What made you think—this was a good idea?" panted Colin.

"You weren't supposed to- follow me!" said Ginny, running round a corner.

"You should've—known I wouldn't let you do—anything perfectly mad on your own. Where are we going?"

"Just follow me!" Ginny grabbed his hand and threw the large double doors open at the bottom of the stairs. Together, they skidded out into the Ministry atrium.

It looked the same, the same as ever, she saw briefly as she dragged Colin out into the middle of the new inlaid wooden floor, which was matched to the old one and polished to a high gloss. She wondered how this was possible when a hurricane of war and Voldemort and suffering and death had howled through it, and when she knew for a fact that most of it had been destroyed in a battle. The golden gates were back, and the gilded fireplaces up and down both sides of the large hall. The peacock blue ceiling was decorated with golden symbols artfully reproduced from the lost originals. And… _oh, gods._ Even the horrible Fountain of Magical Brethren was there, the ugliest piece of public art she'd ever seen in all her life. It all felt so utterly unreal, because nothing had changed, when everything, everything in the world, had changed around it so completely.

But the way that Hermione and the group of Aurors were surrounding her in an angry, shouting ring, holding back Colin and Percy… well, _that_ was pretty real, thought Ginny. Although it just seemed to be Hermione who was shouting.

"It wasn't necessary for you to make this into a public spectacle!" she was yelling now.

"Apparently, it was," said Ginny. "Because otherwise, you would've been very happy to take care of this entire thing in a locked prison cell someplace, where I never would've been seen again."

"You know that nothing along those lines would ever have happened to you. How can you think—"

"Oh, so you just would have tortured _Malfoy._ I see. I wonder if the _Daily Prophet_ might like to do a story on the sorts of things that the Ministry seems to be up to now?"

"Our methods aren't like that at all," Hermione said furiously. "But I've got to find out where Harry is. I've got to. You can't tell me that Malfoy doesn't know something—or that _you_ don't."

"Well, I don't!" snapped Ginny. "So now you've been told."

For a moment, Hermione simply looked frightened. "But someone _has _to know! You were with Malfoy in that cottage all night long while we were out searching all round Lyme, and Harry mysteriously disappeared— are you going to tell me he vanished into thin air? He had to end up _somewhere_!" She stepped closer, so that she was almost nose to nose with Ginny, fear and desperation in her eyes. "Where is he, Ginny? _Where?_"

And as she looked into Hermione's frightened eyes, the same question came to Ginny's mind too. _All that Malfoy said was that he hadn't killed him. He didn't have to tell me the truth about anything else. So what really happened to him? Where is Harry?_

"I'm right here, Hermione," said a tired voice, and Ginny turned towards it like a magnet to metal, irresistibly, and she saw that everyone else did too. It was Harry Potter, standing behind them.

Hermione gasped and went very white, and she ran up to him, throwing her arms around him, laying her head on his chest. Harry let her do it, but he gently picked her arms off after only a few seconds.

"Calm down," he told her. "I'm perfectly all right."

Somehow, a crowd formed and swarmed round him; Ginny wasn't at all sure how it happened, but she found herself near the center of it and next to Harry without wanting to be in the least. Everyone seemed to keep demanding to know exactly what had happened in excited voices, and Hermione was making noises about having everyone arrested if they didn't get out of the way and allow them to go upstairs. Finally, Harry held up a hand.

"Look, Hermione, it's all going to come out anyway, so just let me tell it in my own way, all right? I'm sure a representative of the _Daily Prophet_ is in the back somewhere, and we might just as well get this over with right now."

"Well… all right… if you think it's best, Harry," Hermione said uncertainly.

"I'm really just about done up, so I'm going to make this short," said Harry. "If all of you are wondering where I've been this entire time, well, I'll say that it's almost entirely been in Lyme, at the Malfoy property there."

"I knew it," said Hermione triumphantly. "Harry, I just knew it; that's why we've been trying to get Draco Malfoy here for questioning, we know he's guilty of someth—"

"You might as well not even bother," said Harry. "He's not. Nothing you'll ever be able to get him on, anyway."

"He's… not?" echoed Hermione. "What do you mean, he's not?"

The words echoed in Ginny's ears, too. _He's not. He's not. Draco Malfoy's not guilty of anything. I knew it… I just knew it…_

"Let me get on with it, Hermione," said Harry, with a hint of steel in his voice. "I thought I'd be able to find some proof of… something, let's just say… if I could get into the Malfoy mansion at Lyme last night. I did get in, and I did find something. But it wasn't what I was looking for. Do you remember how Kingsley Shacklebolt always thought that the Wizengamot didn't find even half of the Malfoy money in that investigation last year? Well, I found proof of it. Draco Malfoy has loads of money and property that somehow managed to escape the official inventory."

"But honestly, Harry, that's completely illegal," said Hermione. "He could be charged with obstructing justice."

"No, he couldn't. The problem is…" Harry gave a bitter little laugh. "Nothing that Malfoy did was illegal. He's been very clever. He's covered his tracks, and he's stayed just on this side of this law, every step of the way. There's not a thing we can do."

"How can you be so sure?" Hermione demanded. "What kind of proof did you find, anyway?"

For just the briefest moment, Harry looked confused, and it seemed to Ginny that a vague look came into his eyes. Then he shook his head slightly. "Documents in charmed lockboxes," he said. "A couple of secret rooms. But believe me, Hermione, Malfoy's done a bloody good job."

"Couldn't we get someone to look over those documents anyway? Perhaps there's something they can find in the legal language—"

"If the Ministry wishes to lend itself to completely illegal activities, that is," Percy said crisply. "I think that line has come close enough to being crossed, don't you, Granger?"

She looked at him coldly. Then she gave a long, appraising look to Ginny. "Do you know anything about this?" she asked.

"I don't know a thing," said Ginny. "And I would think that you'd be happy to have Harry back, Hermione."

"I am," said Hermione.

_No, you're not,_ thought Ginny. _Not really, because he didn't jump into your waiting arms._

"But I want to know what's really happening here," Hermione went on. "I'd still like you to come up to the ninth floor to answer a few questions, Ginny."

"Would you," said Ginny. "Well, I'm afraid that I'm not terribly interested in what you'd like."

"I'm afraid that you don't have much choice in the matter," said Hermione. She continued to give her the same appraising look.

_Hermione doesn't believe for a second that Harry's story is all there is to it,_ Ginny realized. _She's every bit as suspicious about Malfoy as she was ten minutes ago. Harry's convinced that it was all about money, but she's not. And she still wants to get me up into that room. To ask me questions? No. To lure Malfoy here, so that he can answer them._

"I won't go up there," said Ginny, hoping that her voice didn't quaver.

"I won't permit this," said Percy.

"Tell them that she doesn't have any choice," Hermione said to Harry.

"Maybe we could get out of here if one of us yells 'fire', and then we all just start running as fast as we can," Colin whispered in Ginny's ear.

Harry hesitated, looking from face to face, and Ginny had a strange, fleeting thought. The Boy Who Lived, darling of the wizarding world, had miraculously returned from a clash with a deliciously dangerous Malfoy on the run from the Ministry, complete with the sunny, spunky Weasley daughter turned sultry, sleazy Death Eater mistress. The _Daily Prophet_ had been breathlessly following the entire story and painting it in purple prose for three straight days. So where were they now? Where on earth was Rita Skeeter?

In that moment of silence, the short, squat filing-elf marched up to Percy Weasley, folded parchment in hand. "Might I _now_ be permitted to officially present this certificate for administrative purposes, which ought to have been done twenty minutes ago under Regulation 3.1416 of Subsection 1/0?" he asked in distinctly aggrieved tones.

"Yes, yes, Arachnos," Percy said. "Very well. I'll take it now." He unfolded the parchment and scanned it briefly. His eyes widened. He shot a strange glance at Ginny. Then he refolded it carefully. "I'll bring it upstairs," he said.

"What on earth was that?" snapped Hermione.

"Perhaps you'd best see it before filing, Granger," Percy said in a careful voice.

Hermione took the parchment, scanning it. "I don't see why I should waste my time on a Aladdin's lamp possession license, or whatever this rubbish is— _oh._ Oh." She pushed it over so that Harry could see.

Then they both looked up at Ginny, and their expressions were filled with something like pity. When she turned to Percy, he looked at her with pity, too.

A long, long murmur went round the ring of people, and the ring swelled into a larger and larger crowd, an enormous circle of pitying eyes, all around Ginny. The tide had turned completely, and suddenly everyone was soothing her, patting her arms and shoulders and back, tenderly supporting her and offering her glasses of water and making her sit down and telling her that _everything would be all right_ and at first she didn't understand and then she did, then she understood all too well. Much later, she would almost think that she remembered running down the street like a crazy woman, crying out the name that she had never called him.

"Draco! Draco! Draco!"

But of course, nobody had allowed her to do anything like that, so it must have happened only in her mind. Percy and Colin between them got her out of the Ministry right away. Harry tried to talk to her then, but Percy firmly told him no. Percy had always been the most perceptive of her brothers, Ginny thought, with a dim, slow, sense of gratefulness. All of her emotions seemed impossibly slow now, or perhaps simply in shock, or dead. They took her back to her studio. She did wonder why they didn't just take her to her flat, but neither one of them would explain. She figured out from what Colin whispered to Percy that Luna was with Blaise and hadn't come back, and that Dean had gone out after her. She was faintly afraid for Luna, but she simply couldn't feel much of anything, just then, so she couldn't summon up much fear either.

Both Percy and Colin wanted to come upstairs and stay with her, but the building was Shielded and wouldn't allow them in unless she permitted it, and she wouldn't permit it. At last, they both gave up and went away. She went upstairs and sat at the table for awhile, staring at the pieces of her broken statue near the door. _Victory. What a joke,_ she thought.

Ginny knew now why Rita Skeeter hadn't been at the Ministry, of course. She'd been at the wedding. She knew now what that license had been. It wasn't for Aladdin's lamp possession, or fishing for prehistoric monsters, or manufacturing magic 8-balls. It was a marriage license. She knew what was written on it, too; or at least the most important piece of what she'd read kept piercing through her mind, on and off, on and off, like lightning flashing across a dark and empty sky.

_This marriage was solemnized between us, Draconis Lucas Malfoy and Astoria Jacquelina Greengrass_.

_Solemnized between us._

_Between Draco and Astoria._

After a long time, Ginny got to her feet, stumbled to the little alcove, and fell into the single bed. She stared at the ceiling, looking at nothing, until the blankness somehow passed into sleep.

_Tap. Tap. Taptaptap._

Ginny's eyes flew open, and she sat up. Somebody was knocking at the door. She got out of bed and walked through the living room. The moon was high, casting sharp-edged shadows on the floor, and she half-expected to cut herself on the edge of each one.

_Taptaptap._

She opened the door just an inch.

Harry stood outside, looking back at her unblinkingly. "Let me in, Ginny," he said.

She thought about that. "Why should I?"

"Because that's all you've ever done, since you were ten years old," he answered. "It would be so easy to do it again."

She thought about that, too.

"Come on," he said, leaning close enough so that she could look right into his brilliantly green eyes that had mesmerized her so thoroughly for so long. "You don't know who you are without me."

"That's true," said Ginny.

"Then why don't you let me in?"

"Because I want to find out." Then she slammed the door in his face, and she waited patiently.

The next knock came very soon. Ginny opened the door just a crack, because she knew who it would be, and she shuddered when she saw that she was right.

"Silly girl," said the man who was Tom Riddle and Lucius Malfoy all at once. "I became quite bored with having to listen to your silly little problems."

"Go away," she said, feeling the sick, awful shiver of helpless fear, as always.

"You yourself opened the door to me, Ginny," said Tom, and Lucius.

She thought about that. "You're right," she said, and she closed it.

Then Ginny leaned against the doorframe, praying that the last knock wouldn't come. _I'm not strong enough,_ she thought. _I'm not. I'm really not._ But it came anyway, as she knew it would, and she opened the door, because her heart would not allow her to do otherwise.

Draco Malfoy stood in the doorway, the moonlight turning his hair and skin and eyes the same shade of unearthly, perfect silver. He stood very, very still, and she stared at him. Then he reached his hand forward, suddenly, and she stumbled back. She felt herself trip over something, and then pain blossomed in the bottom of her foot. She cried out and sank to her knees in the wreckage of her _Victory_ statue. Then she began to sift it all between her numbed fingers. There was a shard of the vacantly smiling female face. There was a jagged piece of the overly feathered wings. There was one of the badly sculpted arms. There were the full lips… the lips had actually been pretty good… Or she'd thought so, anyway. Or maybe there hadn't been anything decent about that sculpture. It had been very bad, actually. Fake and phony and insincere.

Draco was next to her. She knew it without turning to look at him; she felt the warmth of his body, and smelled the chocolate scent of his skin.

"This statue was terrible," she sobbed.

"I could have told you that, Ginny," said Draco. "There was nothing of your true self in it."

Ginny watched her tears dripping onto the broken pieces. She touched her cheek with her hand. Her fingers came back wet. "That's funny. I don't feel like I'm crying."

"You are, though. Your body is crying," said Draco.

Her brow wrinkled. "What do you mean?"

He smiled faintly. "Ginny, are you really telling me that you haven't realized this is a dream?"

She thought about it. "I suppose not."

"Come and see," he said, and they rose together to the ceiling and drifted into the bedroom. Ginny watched her sleeping self on the bed. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

"That's so sad," she said.

"Yes, it is," said Draco. "But I'm crying as well, if that makes you feel any better."

"Really?" asked Ginny, startled. "But it's your wedding night, Draco. I'd think you'd be a bit happier than that."

He grimaced. "It's my wedding night with Astoria Greengrass. Of _course_ I'm crying."

"I can't imagine that makes her very happy."

"I can't say that I particularly care. At any rate, she isn't in the same room with me." Draco tugged at Ginny's hand, and they floated back into the front room. "Why are you crying, Ginny?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, remembering why she'd hoped that he wouldn't come to the door at all. She'd gotten very distracted by that chocolate smell, as usual. "Do you have to ask, Draco? Something very precious has been broken beyond repair."

His lips tightened. "No. I won't allow it to be."

Ginny laughed bitterly. "It's a bit late for that, Draco, considering what you've done."

"I had no choice, Ginny, no choice at all."

"Oh? And why was that?" she demanded.

"I can't tell you." A muscle in his jaw jumped. "No, not even in a dream; it's far too dangerous to tell you—"

Ginny stabbed a finger down at her bleeding foot. "Don't tell me about what's supposedly 'too dangerous'! Do you really think this is the last time I'll ever bleed for you, Draco Malfoy?"

"No," he said, his eyes darkening. "It won't be." He took her hands in his, and she thought dizzily that dream-hands weren't supposed to feel so _real_, so solid, so impossible to pull away from.  
"You married Astoria Greengrass," she said. "What the fuck am I supposed to do now?"

"Wait for me," said Draco. "Wait. I will return to you. Trust me, and wait."

"You have no right to ask me that!"

He shook his head, painfully. "I don't."

"Then why the fuck _are_ you asking me?"

"Because I have no other choice. Ginny, Ginny. I have no choice at all, and neither do you."

"But how do I _know_ you'll actually come back?" she asked him.

Draco bent his head, and the moonlight turned his hair brilliant. The seconds slipped by, and he remained silent. "You don't," he finally said. "I have no promises I can make to you."

She thought about that. Then she did pull away from him. It felt like the hardest thing she had ever done.

"I do have a choice," she said. "And I choose…" She looked into his impossibly beautiful face, smelling his irresistible smell, knowing how utterly and completely and thoroughly she wanted even the hope of ever having him.

"I choose to wake up," said Ginny, and she did.

The bright morning sun flooded through the window onto her face, and she squinted against it. Her entire head felt like someone had stuck it into a vise and given it a vicious twist. Ginny winced, tried to sit up, fell over, and struggled to prop herself against a wall. A highly unattractive vision confronted her from the opposite wall. It seemed to be a frizzy-haired monster of some kind with a splotched face and hopelessly wrinkled clothes, and its arms had an awful lot of freckles on them… _oh._ She'd forgotten about the mirror.

Ginny peered closer. _Ugh. Well, a shower and a hairbrush will probably do wonders._ And yet… and yet… She studied herself curiously, as if looking at a stranger, tracing her face with her fingers, and then she smiled tentatively.

"Hello," she whispered, remembering every bit of her dream. "I don't know who you really are. Or rather… I don't know who _I_ am. But I'm going to find out."

_And thank all the gods, there's a coffeemaker here to help with the entire process!_

Cheered by the thought of all the coffee beans she'd bought on sale the week before and decided to store in the studio, Ginny bounded out of bed, grabbing a hairbrush on her way to the kitchenette. After all, the heights of self-discovery could be far more easily scaled when every single hair on one's head wasn't sticking out in a different direction.


	26. A Dean and Luna Interlude

Where's that espresso machine?" mumbled Ginny, opening and closing cabinet doors at random. She'd bought one at a clearance sale at _Madam Lonelyheart's_ just last month and stuffed it into some cupboard or other at the studio, she was sure of it. So… She glanced at the gleaming copper thing. What was it doing next to the kitchen sink? And why did it look like somebody had just been _using_ it? _Did I make espresso in my sleep? Well, anything's possible these days._ She tried to remember exactly how it was supposed to work. Cold water poured into the water chamber, boiler cap secured, ground coffee lightly packed into the filter holder… _mmm…_ Ginny's mouth watered. _Just a few more minutes… I'll have to have it with honey, though, I forgot to bring any sugar here._

The clock over the sink struck eight, and the cuckoo shot out of a little door, a surly expression on its wooden face.

"Oy! You lazy layabout! It's Monday. Get to work!" it chirped.

Ginny's eyes went wide. _Oh, shite!_ She'd completely forgotten what day it was. _That's what I get for spending the night in a cottage with Draco Malfoy,_ she thought miserably, dropping the espresso cup. _I suppose I would've forgotten my own name next. But he can more than afford to act as if he doesn't need a job, and I can't!_

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she moaned, racing frantically around the little studio, opening doors to empty closets and slamming them shut again. "Nothing to wear. Not one thing!" She couldn't possibly put on the dirty, crumpled clothes from last night, and there wasn't so much as a paper towel here. _Unless… oh, no, I think there is something…_ It was all coming back to her now, although she had successfully repressed the memory for a long time.

Her heart sank as she opened the bedroom closet. It did have _one_ item of clothing in it, all right. Molly Weasley had sent her a dress a few months before, and Ginny had seriously considered setting it afire with one flick of her wand before it had a opportunity to infect the world with its evil even further than it already had. However, there was always the chance that her mother might insist on seeing her in it someday. A Memory charm could always be cast later, and hopefully the psychological scars wouldn't go too deep. But there just wasn't anything else to wear now, and no time to perform a Clothing charm that would last through the morning. _Maybe I could stick together some drawing paper with wet espresso grounds? No, because I didn't even have time to make the espresso, did I? Oh, I'm for it now…_

Grimly, Ginny shimmied into the dress. The mirror on the back of the closet door gave a miserable little moan as she looked into it. "Oh, I agree," she said, staring at the lacy, frilly horror in baby pink. _Hairbrush! Where's the hairbrush? Not that it could possibly make any difference, considering that nightmare of a dress. I might as well go out looking like an orangutan, I guess._ She clawed ineffectually at her hair and grabbed her green purse. At the sight of it next to the dress, five hundred years of color theory whimpered, laid down, and died. Ginny held a quiet, brief funeral in her head for it. Then she ran down the stairs as if pursued by several generations of maddened art teachers, already knowing that she was going to be nearly an hour late for work.

She burst out the front door at top speed, arms outstretched towards the nearest Apparition point, and immediately collided with someone, sending them both hurtling to the ground.

"Oof," said Dean Thomas, hauling her up by one hand. "Glad to finally run into you, Gin. We've been trying to find you for the past hour."

"Uh…" Ginny shook her head, trying to clear it. "Some people would just send an owl, you know. And I'm trying to get to Flourish and Blotts. This had better be good, or-"

"We couldn't find the building," Colin interrupted. "I knew you were around here _somewhere_; I tried to tell Dean that it had to be shielded, but he didn't want to listen to me, of course. We've been walking back and forth for ages and you've got some mud on your dress, there… but I think it's an improvement, if anything. Did your mirror actually let you go out of the flat like that?"

"Shut it, Creevey! We've got more important things to worry about," said Dean. "Luna's disappeared."

"What do you mean?" asked Ginny. "She was with both of you yesterday; she sent those text messages, and she said you were there."

"She disappeared right afterwards," Dean said grimly.

"We weren't worried at first," said Colin. "I mentioned it yesterday when we were at the Ministry—remember, Gin? But I wasn't exactly _worried_ about it yet."

Yes. She did remember Colin saying something about Luna being gone and nobody having heard from her, thought Ginny, although she hadn't been in any shape to remember much of anything at the time.

"Then she didn't call either of us for hours, or show up," said Colin, "and it got a _bit_ worrisome to say the least, but still the problem didn't really begin until…er…"

"I found her self one at three this morning," said Dean ominously. "She'd dropped it at Colin's flat."

"Yes, Dean, and the reason you found it is because you were kind enough to drop by at that perfectly hideous hour. Clever boy. Anyway, Gin, that's why we've been looking for you, aside from the fact that you're her dearest friend and you've simply got to help us. You're the only one we know who could possibly find where it is."

"If you're talking about St. Mungo's psychiatric ward, where both of you clearly belong," said Ginny, "then you certainly don't need _me_ to tell you where it is. I don't understand why you're worried at all. Luna's a big girl, you know. Look, I'm going to be over an hour late as it is, and Mrs. Fustian is going to give me one of those dreadful superior looks of hers from the corner office. Can't you just wait until—"

"We read the texas-message," Dean said portentously.

"It does look rather bad," Colin agreed.

"Argh!" Ginny clutched her head, which was beginning to ache. "All right, this is clearly part of a plot to drive _me_ into St. Mungo's. What in Nimue's name could you possibly be babbling about?"

In answer, Dean thrust a cell phone at her. _Luna's cell phone. Self-one. Texas-message… oh. It's all coming together now. Sort of. No, not really. I still think they're mad._ Ginny punched impatiently at the text message list until the latest one scrolled up.

_Luna—Come to my flat now. Need u desperately. Emergency. Come at once and I'll come later on. Hurry hurry hurry. _

"That's the one she got right before she vanished," said Dean. "And Colin says the self one messages can't be traced, so we don't have any idea who it's from."

"It could be anybody," Colin agreed.

"Whoever it is, Luna dropped everything and ran the moment they asked her to. And nobody's seen or heard from her since. We've been round and talked to all of her friends," said Dean.

"All extremely happy about being woken up at five in the morning, too," added Colin.

Ginny stared at the text message. Her friend had disappeared. Nothing else mattered. "All right," she said, everything in the world forgotten besides Luna's gentle face and the awful, gnawing fear that something dreadful had happened to make those blue eyes cloud with pain, or the soft mouth cry out in terror. "So you don't have _any_ idea who this came from? Or where she could be?" she asked.

"Not the slightest," said Colin.

"It doesn't matter. Let's go find her," Ginny said firmly. "Oh—wait—what is it you think I'll be able to do that you couldn't do?"

"I suppose we don't _know_ this, exactly," said Dean, "but you're the only one either of us knows who even has a chance of being able to find her. We were thinking that perhaps you'd learned something from Bill, some sort of Cursebreaker trick."

Ginny gnawed on her lower lip. The last thing she wanted to be reminded of at the moment was any spell of her brother Bill's; a long, long night of _in vino veritas_ was still much too clear in her mind. But she couldn't refuse to try. Not if it would help Luna.

"There might be something," she said. "It's from when Bill would track vampires in the Romanian forests. I need something of hers. That phone would work, I suppose." She passed her wand over the text message, devoutly hoping that this particular spell would work better than any of the others Bill had taught her. "_ Descoperă._

The phone quivered and then swung round to the left. Ginny raised her eyebrows. "I really need to have a talk with Bill about these spells."

"It looks like it's pointing us somewhere, though," said Dean.

"I think so," admitted Ginny. The phone was straining in her hand. "It's probably the best we're going to get. But the strange thing is that it ought to be giving some information about where we're supposed to be going, or who's sent the message, or _something_. That's the whole point of the spell. It wouldn't do a lot of good to randomly follow vampires into the middle of the woods, don't you think?"

"I sincerely hope that Luna hasn't been kidnapped by a gang of vampires," said Colin.

"All the more reason to find her as fast as possible," said Dean. "Come on, Ginny."

"How exactly do I keep getting myself into these things?" asked Colin, but the other two had already started down the street at top speed.

Nobody could exactly say that the spell didn't work, thought Ginny. The cell phone seemed to be pulling them to their destination of its own accord; she was fairly sure that they hadn't even used an Apparition point yet, but something still seemed very odd, and she was having some trouble working out where it was.

"Dean, do you know where we _are_?" she asked as the phone tugged her down a street that really ought to have looked familiar.

"No," he said, frowning. "And I keep thinking that I should." He glanced around in a confused way. "I'm almost sure I saw a street sign a moment ago, but then it disappeared…"

"This really does almost look familiar," said Colin. "No—maybe not—or perhaps it's just that I can't quite remember when I've been here. Does it really matter, though? The phone's still leading us to wherever Luna is, right?"

"I don't know…" Ginny shook her head, trying to clear it. "I just keep thinking that I should know where I am perfectly well, because I've been here before. This building, for instance." They began climbing up the back stairs.

"I think I know what this reminds me of," said Dean thoughtfully. "It's really rather like the psych ward at St. Mungo's. It's Shielded so that it's impossible to find unless you have visiting privileges or you're an employee, and even if you do, you don't quite know where it _is._ You only know how to get there."

Ginny closed her eyes briefly. She remembered that all too well from the summer after her twelfth year. "How do you know that, Dean?" she asked tightly.

"I'm one of the medipsych interns there," he said quietly. "I don't tell a great many people about that, of course."

"Oh. _Oh_." Ginny felt a wave of shame. "Dean, if I'd known, I'd never have said what I did earlier. I shouldn't have done, anyway. It wasn't a very funny joke, was it?"

He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. You're not gasping in horror and making the sign against the evil eye now that you know what I'm doing, anyway. I knew you wouldn't—that's why I told you. But the point is that this does make me think of that. The question is _why_. Is it really just something to do with the spell itself—the one you learned from Bill—or is it because wherever we're going really is Shielded?"

"And if it is, then why?" murmured Ginny.

"What are you two mumbling about back there?" asked Colin. "I absolutely _know_ I've been here before, although why it should make me think of goats, I really can't guess."

"And I don't particularly care to," said Ginny lightly, grateful to Colin for providing a moment's comic relief. Things had been getting altogether too heavy with Dean.

She craned her head round the hall corner. "That's it, number sixty-six," she hissed.

"How do you know?" asked Dean.

"You know, I was going to say number sixty-six as well," said Colin. "This is looking so awfully familiar. I just don't know why."

The cell phone pulsed eagerly in Ginny's hand. A tremor of unease fluttered through her stomach. _I don't think this is going to be good._ "Luna's in there," she said.

"Right. Let's go," said Dean.

"Wait, wait," said Colin. "How are we supposed to get in there? Anybody thought of that?"

"Because I cast the Descoperă spell, I have to go in first. That's the way it works. I suppose that I could just knock on the door," said Ginny.

Dean set his jaw in a way that reminded Ginny distinctly of all her older brothers put together. "You are _not_ going to do any such thing."

"Oh, both of you could rescue me before it got too far, if the flat belongs to some sort of leftover Death Eater-serial killer sort of character," said Ginny. "Or maybe it's a Death Eater sex talk call center looking for new girls—" _Why on earth am I babbling like a lunatic?_ she wondered. _Something's very wrong here, I just know it. Oh, fuck, I'm not looking forward to finding out what's behind that door… and who…_

"That's it," said Dean. "You're staying out in the hall."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "I was only joking."

"Well, it's not funny," muttered Dean.

"I thought it was Luna's virtue we were worried about."

"How the hell do we know who's in there? I'll have to protect the _both_ of you as well as beating whoever it is to a bloody pulp, and then—"

"When the two of you have quite done flirting," said Colin, "you might get round to answering my question. Finding the flat isn't going to do much good if we can't get into it."

_Oh no,_ Ginny thought uncomfortably. _I do hope Colin's not having a perceptive moment. He's rather prone to those lately._ There certainly wasn't any flirting on her end where Dean Thomas was concerned, but from his point of view… well, they'd once dated at Hogwarts, after all, and she'd always been uncomfortably aware that he'd liked her very much, and she'd treated him very badly. She'd rather callously dumped him for Harry Potter, knowing that Dean still wanted her, and still cared about her. _What if he wants to pick things up again now? What if he's getting ready to rescue Luna and murder whoever it is to impress me? What if I'll have to bail him out of Azkaban? Conjugal visits will be right out, that's for sure… oh, fuck, how do I get myself into these things?_

"Uh… how about good old-fashioned Alohamora?" asked Ginny.

Dean snorted. "On the door of a Shielded flat? Not bloody likely. I wouldn't be surprised if there are about a dozen Dark spells guarding it." He seemed to think for a moment. "Ginny, what about some good Entering spells, something that goes beyond Alohamora? Did Bill ever teach you any of those?"

Ginny thought hard, but could remember nothing. "I really don't think so."

"Ginny, can't you think of anything that might at least test it out? Get some sort of idea of what might be guarding that door?"

"Well… there's one spell I did learn from Bill that's along those lines a bit, but only a bit," said Ginny. "It'll reveal who's gone in or out of the flat recently. But it's not very precise—"

"It would prove that Luna's in there, though," said Colin.

"No, I don't think it would, which was what I was trying to say. It only works for people who come from families that have used a lot of Dark magic for a long time, and unless Luna's got a secret life she hasn't been telling me about, that won't apply to her," said Ginny. "The other thing is that it's drawn more to the Dark magic than to the individual person, so if they're directly connected to a family who's in it deeper than their own, that's the one the spell will identify."

"And that's all you have?" Colin asked dubiously. "It doesn't seem very helpful to me."

"I didn't say it was," said Ginny irritably. "Do you want me to try it, or do you want to spend the rest of your life in this hallway? Or would you like to wait until whoever it is who has Luna skips out for the afternoon paper and drags you in there as his personal slave boy?"

"Well, now that you mention it—"

"Shut it, Creevey," said Dean. ""Of course I want you to try it, Ginny. We can't be too picky just now, and we don't know what might be helpful."

Ginny drew her wand. _I don't see how this is going to work,_ she thought. _But we've got to try something. Maybe I can at least find out who else is there; it seems likely that whoever it is would be connected with Dark magic in some way. .._

"What are you waiting for?" hissed Colin.

She stared down at her own hand, feeling a tiny twinge of apprehension rippled through her. _Why?_ she wondered. _Bill's spells don't have a very good track record so far. The last one led us here, at least, but we don't have any idea what we're going to find. Is that it? I don't have a good feeling about this, I really don't. But there's nothing else to do._

"_Probatur,_" she finally said, tapping the doorknob.

Ginny wasn't sure what she'd expected, although it was probably something along the lines of a loud voice announcing the identities of every sinister character who had walked through the door that morning. When she heard nothing, she was sure for a few moments that the spell either simply hadn't worked, or that nobody dodgy was in the flat at all. How could she be so sure that _Luna_ was even here? Maybe the entire thing had been a wild goose chase; look at how Bill's other spells had worked. _I'm going to be in so much trouble at work,_ she thought guiltily. _But maybe not if I leave right now. I really ought to turn around this second and just-_

A small, shadowy image shaped itself in her head. Or perhaps it wasn't so much an actual image as an impression, or even an overall sensation, but whoever it was, Ginny couldn't even tell if the person was male or female. _This really isn't very useful,_ she thought.

"Did it work? It doesn't look like it worked. I'm not seeing anything. I'm not hearing anything," said Colin. "I don't think the spell worked. I just hate it when spells don't work. I mean, if they're not going to work, then you have to think of something else, and then if _that_ doesn't work, you're _really_ in trouble, and—"

"Shut _up_, Colin!" hissed Ginny. Another impression was coming. This one was very vague and wispy. She tried as hard as she could to gather it together into some sort of coherent form, but it was never quite possible. For a second, though, she had a single flash of _Smollet._ Smollet… now, where had she heard that before? A dim memory of a late-night conversation came back to her. Luna had said that her cousin had married a Smollet, a member of a pureblood family that been very much involved with Voldemort. That had to be it, then. The connection was by marriage, and it wasn't really close enough for her to get a true picture, but it had to mean that they'd been right.

"Luna's here," she said.

"Who else?" Dean asked tensely.

"I don't know. I'm not getting anyone. Either there isn't anyone else, or there's nobody who has any Dark connections."

It was a tiring spell to keep up, and Ginny gave a long sigh. She began to lower her wand. Suddenly, something hit her with all the force of a tremendous wave. She fell back against the wall, flattened by the force of the impression, the sensation, the overwhelming presence. It felt palpable, _real_, as if she could reach out and touch it, but even more so; it felt as if it… _he…_ were inside her, breathing in and out with her lungs, seeing with her eyes, touching the smooth cool brass of the doorknob and the irregular grain of the wooden door with her fingertips.

_Malfoy._

The spell was telling her that a Malfoy had walked through the door of this flat. She was sure of it.

"Ginny?" She faintly heard Dean's voice. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," she said. What else _could_ she say? "That spell, uh… it takes a lot out of you. That's all."

"I knew Luna was there," said Dean under his breath. "Fuck, and we still can't get in—"

Ginny barely heard him. Her hand went out to the doorknob, and she turned it.

"Huh. It was open all the time," said Colin. "I thought that sort of thing only happened in bad Muggle sitcoms."

Draco couldn't be on the other side of the door, waiting for her. It was mad. And suddenly, she desperately didn't want him to be; something very small and newly born in her knew that he couldn't be, or the madness would all begin again. Something else in her wanted to fall into his arms just as desperately, craved him beyond all reason, and burned for him to finish what they'd begun the night before. She could feel the dark hot thick excitement pounding through her veins and humming through her entire body, driven by this part of her that he'd so expertly awakened. And yet—

The flat still looked hazy and strange, as if she could almost, _almost_ remember it. She'd been there once before, and she knew it, but she couldn't quite place anything. The Shielding spell still lay over everything, although it would wear off very soon.

Someone was sitting in one of the chairs at the kitchen table that she knew she would remember in a minute or so. His back was to her, and she couldn't see him at all. She wasn't even sure why she knew a man was sitting there. But she did know. It was Draco, it had to be, and when he turned round and saw her, she would stalk up to him and slap his face. No, she would straddle his lap and kiss him full on the mouth and pull his clothes off, and then pull him down to her and they would make love on that horrid table… _ouch._ Ginny winced at the thought. He'd be pressing her right into the carving of the goat (_why do I know there's a carving of a goat? Didn't Colin say something about a goat?_) Well, maybe they could move to the purple sheepskin rug. No! She would tell him that he'd made his bed and now he had to lie in it, and after all, Astoria was already there, and she was clearly what he wanted, because he'd married her. No… she'd… well, she'd…

"My little lollipop's back," said a deep, sexy voice. "I've missed her. I don't like to go so long without a good licking session. Let's not do it again. Can't we use a delivery service next time? What say we start putting all that coffee ice cream to some good use? We don't need to bother with spoons, do we…"

_Little lollipop?_ Ginny thought blankly. _Something's not right here…_

"Luna, love, why don't we start from the toes and work our way up this time? There's a little tickly bit on your inner right thigh I don't think I've lavished _quite_ enough attention on yet…" The chair began to swivel round. _Oh, no,_ thought Ginny.

Blaise Zabini faced her, wearing a black satin robe with a tiger embroidered all the way down its back. It was undoubtedly meant to look sinister and sexy, but Ginny thought that it gave much more of an effect of needing a good dose of worming medication. His hooded eyes sprang open. "Ginny?" he asked incredulously. "What are you doing here?"

"What am _I_- what are _you_ doing here, Zabini?" she demanded.

"It's my flat! I rather think that gives me the right to be here, you know."

"But—but—" she stammered. "It was Shielded, and—and Luna should be here, and—"

"She went out for coffee ice cream and more chocolate syrup, not that it's precisely any of your business. I've given up threesomes as of this morning," said Blaise. "Ginny, love, what _are_ you doing here?"

"Where's Draco?" she blurted.

Blaise looked away from her shiftily. "Er…"

"Where _is_ he?"

"Oh, Ginny my sweet, why do you ask me questions like this?"

"Blaise Zabini, if you don't tell me where he is right this minute I'm going to hex your balls together into a Gordian knot!"

Blaise winced. "I'm not half done using those today! All right, Ginnygin, but please remember that you forced me to this. He's uh…" His gaze fell to the floor. "On his honeymoon with Astoria. On Vendetta Island, just off Corsica."

"Oh," said Ginny faintly. Her wand hand fell. Her head seemed to be filled with an enormous buzzing.

"Ginny, you _must_ have known what sort of answer you'd get to that question," Blaise said softly. "Whyever did you ask?"

"Uh…"

"Surely you didn't break into my Shielded flat on Monday morning at the ungodsly hour of nine a.m. just to ask me one of the more awkward questions in the world?"

"No…" Ginny looked down at her feet.

"Then why?"

Ginny really had no idea what to say. However, the door burst open at that precise moment, and at the sight of Dean's furious face only a millisecond before he stabbed his wand into the center of Blaise's chest, backing him up against the full-sized black velvet painting of the tiger on the living room wall, she realized that there was really no need for her to explain anything at all.


	27. Daphne Just May Have Some News to Share

Dean stalked forward until Blaise was flattened all the way against the velvet tiger painting on the wall. This was rather unfortunate, thought Ginny, because it immediately began scratching at the tiger embroidered on his dressing gown, and Blaise looked as if he was in enough trouble already.

"I should've known it was you, Zabini," snarled Dean. "You tricked Luna into coming here, didn't you?"

"Stop poking me with your wand! I've strictly given up that sort of thing," said Blaise. "I assure you, Luna came here because she wanted to."

"Really? Then why'd you Shield this flat?"

"Because I wanted us left alone! Not that it worked."

"I must say, that's rather a change from Blaise's normal _modus operandi_," ventured Colin. "He's usually happy to get as many people in on the orgy as possible."

"Shut it, Creevey," said Dean. "Zabini, you don't know how to do anything but hurt girls, whether you mean to or not. Luna's nothing to you but another one of your conquests; she can't be. That is, if you don't have an even worse motivation, which I wouldn't put past you an inch. You'll end up making her miserable, I'd bet anything."

"I wouldn't talk about making her miserable if I were you," said Blaise. "I've heard about the sordid Dean/Luna history, and it was far from a pretty little tale—_urgh_- all right, all right, it wasn't exactly _little!_ Happy now? Let go of my throat?"

"You don't know anything about it. I'm not a male slut. I _cared_ about her, and—"

"And it doesn't seem to have worked out too well, has it, seeing as how she's spent practically all of the last two days with me?" drawled Blaise, staggering backwards a bit. "_And_ the nights."

"I wonder if we could just get out of here while they hex each other into oblivion?" whispered Colin to Ginny.

"Speaking of a _modus operandi_, that does seem to be your favorite lately," she said. "No, we can't."

"Whyever not? You don't know what sort of stray spell might hit us once the wands really start whipping about. Er, so to speak."

"Because I have to find out what's going on," she hissed.

"They're yelling at the top of their lungs. I wouldn't have thought it's much of a secret. Can't we just—"

"No!" Ginny bit her lip, seriously wondering if it was a good idea to tell anyone anything about this. She took the plunge. "Colin, when I was performing that Probatur spell on the door, I could tell that Luna was in here." She took a deep breath. "But I also saw… well, _felt_… Draco Malfoy." That was stretching the truth just a bit, because all she'd known for sure was that she'd felt _a_ Malfoy, but she decided that it was close enough.

Colin's eyes widened. "But he can't be here, Gin. You know he can't. He's, uh… well…"

"On his honeymoon," Ginny said grimly. "I know; I heard what Blaise said. It's impossible. But Colly, I know what I felt."

"Didn't you say the spell also detected close relatives? Maybe Draco and Blaise are half-brothers, or something quite odd. Stranger things have happened. Such as the way Dean's pressing Blaise all the way up against that entertainment center on the wall and it's about to crash down on him… Ginny, do think we should try to rescue them?"

"Luna can decide if she wants to Petrify them both whenever she gets back," Ginny said impatiently. "That's not a bad theory, Colly, but it can't be right. I'm sure that Draco and Blaise are cousins of some kind, but we all are, anybody who's a pureblood is a fifth cousin or something. It's not close enough for them to be mistaken for each other with that spell."

Colin grimaced. "Ugh. How closely related is Astoria, do you suppose? Does that mean that she and Malfoy will have loads of albino, three-headed children?"

Ginny turned her head away, a knife running itself through her chest. She couldn't answer.

"Oh, God," moaned Colin. "I'm the most insensitive person who has ever walked the earth. Could you just take out your wand and perform Cruciatus on me right now? A good long session of it? I'd feel ever so much better if you did, Gin. Or would you like me to go and bash my head repeatedly against that table? I think the part with the wooden carving of the goat's bits would be especially effective—"

"_No_, Colin," said Ginny. "Look, I felt Malfoy here really, really strongly. And I've got to figure out what it meant." She glanced up. Dean was chasing Blaise into the kitchen, waving his wand.

"You had your chance, medic-boy!" Blaise yelled over his shoulder. "Luna doesn't want you. She told me so."

"_Medic-boy?_" Colin whispered to Ginny.

"Maybe it's the best insult he could come up with on short notice," she whispered back. _They do seem awfully busy. Maybe we could start searching the rest of the flat…_

The door opened. A large paper sack came in with a bit of dishwater-blonde hair peeping out behind it. _Luna!_ thought Ginny. Huge, misty blue eyes peered at her over the sack.

"Oh. _Oh._ Ginny, I wasn't quite expecting you, much less in that simply awful dress. And I see you're not alone. Colin, I don't think this is exactly the best time… And what's that _crashing_ noise?" She craned her head round, towards the kitchen. "Dean is shoving Blaise up against the knife rack. Oh dear. I don't think this can possibly turn out well at all. Blaise! Put down the butcher knife, please, and come in here, both of you. And you've got to stop trying to killing each other."

"I couldn't get at my wand," Blaise said rather shamefacedly. "It seemed like the next best thing. Luna, sweet, they simply broke in before I could do anything about it."

"Well, I didn't think they were invited," said Luna. She glanced at Dean. He looked back her rather self-righteously, Ginny thought.

"What are you _doing_ here?" he demanded.

"I should have thought that was rather obvious," Luna said mildly. "I was so hoping that this exact situation wouldn't happen. But now it has. Blaise, I thought you said you were going to Shield us." She put the sack down on the table, where it balanced precariously on one of the carved threesomes. They tried to squirm out of the way, but only ended up by bumping into the goat.

"I did, Luna love," protested Blaise. "I don't know what happened."

"Uh—Descopera," admitted Ginny. "That's what happened. It's a finding spell. We were all horribly worried about you, Luna."

"I suppose I ought to have told somebody where I was going," Luna said thoughtfully. "But when I got Blaise's sexy-message, I remembered yesterday, and the day before, and I simply couldn't help myself. Or is that quite the right word? Blaise, you're turning the most interesting shade of reddish-brown. I suppose it's because Dean is strangling you. Do stop it, Dean, or I'll never talk to you again." She shot him a stern look.

"It's called a text-message, actually," said Ginny. The full meaning of the phrase "come now, and then I'll come later" was suddenly all too clear. "Luna, was it your idea for Blaise to Shield his flat? Only it's sounding like it was."

"Yes," said Luna. "It was so Dean couldn't find us. It doesn't seem to have worked."

"Couldn't find you!" spluttered Dean. "I would've saved you from falling into Zabini's clutches if I _had_ found you in time!"

"Dean always did have a bit of that saving-people-thing," whispered Colin to Ginny. "It wasn't usually as bad as Harry's, but he had his moments, and I've think he's having an especially bad one now."

"But I wanted to fall into his clutches," Luna said patiently. "They're rather nice clutches. Oh dear, the testosterone's really going to start flowing now. No—I suppose it already must have done, or both of you wouldn't have been chasing each other around the kitchen with your wands out, would you?"

"I thought you rather _liked_ my testosterone," said Blaise, sounding hurt.

"I do," said Luna. "But not when that particular hormone is driving you to murder each other. For instance, Dean looked as if he was trying rather seriously to kill you simply because he's angry at you for having sex with me." She turned to Dean. "I do so wish you wouldn't do that. Besides, Blaise and I aren't the least bit done having sex today, so I wish _everyone_ would just go away for now."

As with so many of Luna's statements, thought Ginny, there seemed to be nothing to say in reply.

"I can't just go away now, Luna," said Dean more quietly, his wand hand dropping to his side. "You know I can't."

"I'm going to put the ice cream in the freezer now," said Luna, avoiding his eyes. "It'll all melt otherwise. "Oh, I bought three flavors, by the way, and they all look quite good." She took several cartons out of the bag. "Here's the paper, by the way. It was on the front mat." She tossed the late morning edition of the _Daily Prophet_ on the table. Dean tried to grab at her hand, and the paper fell open to the middle page. Ginny stared at it. She saw that everyone else was clearly doing the same thing.

_Rita Skeeter's Corner—All the News That's Far From Fit to Print!_

The deadly-yet-delicious Draco Malfoy may have been officially cleared of all charges by the Ministry (although a little birdie's whispered in the ear of yours truly that the official story doesn't always say all there is to say), but a few juicy recent events show that his tendrils may still be reaching far and wide. Which wide-eyed innocent has been newly entrapped in what callous playboy's torrid love nest for the past three days now? Could it be… the lovely Luna Lovegood, and the blasé Blaise Zabini? Sources say yes. And is it just a coincidence that the two halves of this decidedly odd couple are the bosom best friends of Ginny Weasley and Draco Malfoy, respectively? Remember that little birdie? He just tweet-tweet-tweeted a very decisive "no." Call me cynical, but in this reporter's opinion, le Zabini is pumping the lissome Lunette for inside information about a certain redheaded temptress to pass on to a very interested party. Of course, that may not be all he's pumping her for!

Dean snatched the newspaper from the table and crumpled Rita Skeeter's smirking photographed face into a tiny, alarmed-looking ball.

_Oh dear,_ thought Ginny.

"That's it," he said. "I knew it, I _knew_ there was more to it, Zabini. That's why you dragged Luna in here. Oh, you were happy to use her for sex, of course, being the sort of male whore that you are, but the real reason was to get information for Malfoy. "

"That's not true," said Blaise, stroking Luna's arm. "Luna, sweet thing, I swear it's not."

"So you really do care about me?" asked Luna.

"Uh—I don't think that this is exactly the ideal time to get into that, what with Dean Thomas's wand pointed at highly delicate parts of my anatomy," said Blaise. "But haven't we had the loveliest time over the past few days?"

"Yes," said Luna. "And yet… one really does have to wonder, doesn't one, after reading that article…"

Ginny bit her lip until she could taste blood. If this hurt Luna, then she couldn't help it; she thought that maybe Luna already knew anyway. "Blaise isn't just trying to get information for Draco Malfoy," she said flatly. "Malfoy's _here._ I felt him when I performed that spell on the door. He's somewhere in this flat."

"What?" asked Blaise, sounding astonished. "Gin, I _told_ you where he was. You know perfectly well that it's true. He's not here; he can't be here. Are you going absolutely mad? I mean, I know how difficult all of this has been, but you're starting round the twist if you seriously think— _stop_ that!"

Dean had already begun to throw doors open at random. Blaise ran after him, making agitated noises, and in any other situation, thought Ginny, she would have laughed hysterically at the array of latex and silicone items revealed in closets and storage nooks, not to mention odd leather outfits, masses of dubious metallic chains, and unidentifiable inflatables. But not now.

"The bedroom," Dean finally said. "Of course. I should've known. I'm sure you're used to hiding people in there, Zabini."

"Don't go in there!" yelped Blaise. "Whatever you do, don't open that door!"

Dean laughed in his face and turned the knob.

"Oh, no," Blaise moaned. "I'm _sure_ that we didn't put away the Japanese bondage ropes…"

The room was quite dim. In the seconds before Ginny's eyes adjusted to the light, all she could see was an enormous bed with a figure curled up in the middle, fast asleep. But she knew instantly that the person couldn't be Draco.

For a horrible second, Ginny thought that she saw Astoria Greengrass—no, she miserably corrected herself, _Astoria Malfoy now._ The woman's blonde hair flowed down her back, her features were sharp and bony, her eyelashes and eyebrows pale and sparse, her lips thin and pink. Then she shifted in her sleep, the light from the hallway hitting her face, and Ginny saw all the differences. But she also knew why she'd mistaken the woman for Astoria. She was looking at her older sister, Daphne. Asleep in Blaise Zabini's bed. Ginny glanced sideways and saw that Luna was looking at her, too.

_Oh dear._

"This isn't what it looks like," Blaise said frantically. "I didn't do a thing with Daphne! I haven't touched her! I didn't so much as lay eyes on her before you opened that door—"

Dean snorted. "I'll bet you laid something on her, all right."

"I _didn't_!" insisted Blaise. "I didn't know she was here, I don't even know how she got in, I have no idea how any of this happened! Luna, love, you've simply got to believe me." He turned to Luna, a pitifully appealing look in his big green eyes, but Dean had already grabbed her and started to drag her away.

"Just how thick do you think she is, Zabini?" he asked, shaking his head. "Well, you've shown your true colors at last. What a surprise. We're leaving!"

Luna shook off his hand. "I'm not going anywhere yet, Dean," she yet, with a notable lack of her usual dreaminess, Ginny thought. "Blaise, are you telling the truth?"

"I am, I swear I am!" he said, his voice panicky.

"Hmm," said Luna. "Hmm. I'm afraid it's true that you do lack credibility in this area."

"There's a bit of cosmic justice in all this, some would say," whispered Colin. "I mean, considering the way that he's cheated on untold numbers of girlfriends, and boyfriends, and people of indeterminate gender, and—"

"Shh, Colly," whispered Ginny. She had been standing closer to Blaise than anyone else when the door opened, and she'd seen something that she thought nobody else had. When he had first seen Daphne, she would have sworn that his face had been filled with absolute and genuine astonishment.

"Luna," said Blaise, his voice wheedling. "Luna, love. Let's get everybody out of here, and then we'll wake up Daphne and send her on her way, and we can get back to that coffee ice cream, all right? Don't you think that would be the best idea?"

"I don't know what I think," said Luna.

"_I_ think it's time to get the hell out of here," said Dean. "Come on, Luna."

"You're probably right," she said.

Dean smiled. "See? I knew she'd see right through you, Zabini." He tried to take Luna's hand, but she avoided him nimbly.

"Oh, I don't think I'll be going with you, Dean," she said.

"What?" He blinked at her. "But—"

"I'm not a prize to be won, you see," she said. "Come on, Ginny."

Ginny felt Luna take her hand. The other girl's fingers were cool and smooth. "I'd rather like to get away somewhere from all of these boys," said Luna. "Wouldn't you?"

"I think that's an excellent idea," said Ginny.

"So do I," said Colin.

"You can't come," said Luna. "You're a boy as well."

"Me?" exclaimed Colin. "I wasn't mixed up in any of this the least little bit!"

"I'm sorry," said Luna. "Anybody with a penis is excluded for the rest of the day, and I don't care what you use it for. Goodbye."

The two girls walked downstairs together towards the nearest Apparition point. But as the door closed, Ginny couldn't help giving a final glance back. Daphne was starting to sit up in the bed, rubbing at her head, looking irritated. Dean was leaning towards her, his face furious. But Daphne wasn't looking at him. Her eyes were seeking out Ginny. Her mouth opened, as if she was about to say something, and she leaned forward. Luna slammed the front door shut.

Ginny stirred at her cup of tea at the table in her art studio. "I'm really awfully sorry about us dragging you out of there before you and Blaise had, uh…"

"Finished having morning sex?" Luna added honey to her own cup.

"Well, yes," Ginny told her cup of tea. She could feel her cheeks burning. Luna certainly could be remarkably matter-of-fact sometimes.

"I was a bit upset at first," said Luna, "although I knew it was Dean's fault, not yours. I think I suspected that he was going to track me down to begin with. I must say, this tea tastes as though it's been sitting about for awhile. Not that I mind, really. That's just how Dad would always make it. Once he kept a packet of tea in the cupboard for ten years."

"Wait, wait. Why did you think Dean would be the one to track you down?" Ginny already felt as if she were getting a headache. That was something which did have a tendency to happen when trying to get a straight answer out of Luna out of anything.

"Oh, I've always known that he'd simply go ballistic if I ever fucked anyone else," said Luna. "Do you have any chocolate biscuits?"

Ginny almost choked on her tea. Apparently, Luna was learning exactly how to get to the point. "You mean… you and Dean…" _Gods, I should have realized this before. Blaise did say something about it, sort of, and Dean did as well. But I don't think my brain was exactly working too well at the time. I couldn't get that strange thing with Draco showing up in the spell out of my head. I still can't, and it makes less sense than ever now…_

"We dated right after seventh year at Hogwarts," said Luna. "We kept it a bit quiet, and you were rather wrapped in Harry just then. It didn't last long, really, because it didn't really work out, but he's never quite given up. Do you know, I rather think it's because he was my first. He feels a bit possessive."

"Er… " Ginny tried a cautious sip. "If you don't mind telling me, Luna, how was he?"

"I can't really say, because he _was_ the first, but I'd hazard a guess that he was quite good. It was very nice, after the first time or two, because those did hurt."

"Oh. Really? Yes, that what I've… uh…"

"Heard? So you don't know? Didn't you ever do it with Harry?" asked Luna in a friendly way.

"No," admitted Ginny.

"Oh. Well, how about Draco Malfoy?"

"No," sighed Ginny. "We came rather close, though."

"Was that nice?"

Ginny laughed. "Nice is _not_ the word I'd use. I'd never even thought that anything or anyone could make feel the way he did. Although I was a bit intimidated when I actually saw him, I must say. The first time or two would _definitely_ hurt."

"He was large, then?"

"Very." Ginny wriggled luxuriously at the memory.

Luna gave a little smile. "Boys do seem rather interested in the topic of size, don't they? I kept telling Dean that I didn't have any basis for comparison, but there were those life drawing classes I took with you, and that rather dirty book about the male form that Hermione made us all look at in the Gryffindor common room at three in the morning during sixth year by pretending that it was educational, so I told him that he was of very respectable dimensions. That seemed to make him happy. I must say," she went on thoughtfully, "that he certainly seemed to know how to _use_ it."

"It sounds as if you're glad that you chose him, then," sighed Ginny. "Even though it didn't work out in the end."

"Oh, yes," said Luna. "Do you wish you'd had sex with Malfoy? Or…" Immediately, she looked stricken. "I suppose I shouldn't have asked that. I'm not very tactful sometimes. You can pretend I didn't ask it, if you like."

Ginny turned her cup round in her hands. "No. It's all right. I'm truly glad I didn't. He—" She forced herself to say the words. "He ended up marrying Astoria Greengrass, after all. And yet… I'm not so sure that I know. Perhaps there's a bit of me that thinks that if I'd let him shag me, at least I'd have that. At least I'd know then what it would have been like with him. What we did do was so…" She shivered. What to say, even to Luna, who always understood everything? _Amazing. Frightening. Consuming._ "I'll never forget it," she finally said. "And it does seem as if that can't possibly be all there is, if I'm never going to be with him again, if it's something I can't ever forget."

They sat in silence for what seemed like a very long time. Ginny saw that Luna's head was drooping to one side. "Could I go to sleep for a bit in your bedroom?" she asked. "It seems silly, because it can't be past noon, but I'm very tired. I've hardly slept at all in the last few days."

"Yes, of course," Ginny said absently. Luna padded into the little bedroom, and she heard the door close, but she kept sitting at the table, staring into her cup of tea. Then she pushed back her chair. _Oh, gods, I need to go to work! Mrs. Fustian will probably throw me out on my arse. But I don't see how I could do anything else. Luna needed me. Fuck, and I'm still wearing this hideous dress._ She hesitated, looking at the scrunched-up ball of her clothes from the night before. Maybe it actually _would_ be better to spend half an hour on a really good Cleaning charm…

A soft, sharp knock came at the door. Ginny jumped. _Who the hell is that?_ Her building was Shielded; nobody should have been able to get in unless she invited them. Cautiously, she approached the door and peeped through the little charmed hole. Daphne Greengrass looked back at her.

"What the hell do you want?" she hissed.

"I need to talk to you," Daphne said in clipped tones.

"What could you possibly have to say to me? Oh! I know one thing you could do. You could explain what the hell you were doing in Blaise Zabini's bed!"

"I came there," Daphne said through clenched teeth, "in order to talk to you. And if you'd like to reassure Luna Lovegood, Blaise was telling the truth when he said that he didn't even know I was there. I Apparated into his flat because I knew you'd be there."

"_You_ were the one I felt through that spell," Ginny said slowly. "It wasn't a Malfoy at all. I felt your presence because—because your sister's married to Draco Malfoy. That was the close relationship. That's why you showed up as a Malfoy."

"Yes, well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about." Daphne gave her an extremely sour look. "It's about the wedding."

"The—what exactly do you mean?"

"Draco and Astoria's wedding."

"I don't want to hear anything you could have to say about that," said Ginny.

Daphne raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Not even the fact that I tried my best to stop it from happening?"

Ginny leaned against the cool, smooth wood. Her forehead felt feverish. Had she actually heard what she'd just thought she had? "You did _what_?"

"You've got perfectly good hearing, Ginny Weasley," snapped Daphne. "I said that I tried to stop my sister from marrying Draco Malfoy. Now, are you going to let me in, or not?"

_I may live to regret this,_ thought Ginny. But she slowly unlocked the door and swung it open.


	28. Daphne's Tantalizing Tales

+++  
Daphne stepped in, her heels clattering on the wooden floor. She glanced around the little studio, and Ginny's eyes narrowed. _She's exactly the same as her sister,_ she thought. _She's giving everything that superior look, as if nothing she sees could possibly meet the Greengrass family standards. The only reason she probably tried to stop the wedding is because the diamond in Astoria's engagement ring wasn't big enough. And she's going to say something snotty about this pink dress any second, I just know it… Oh, why did I even let her in here!_

"I don't suppose you mind if I sit down," said Daphne.

"Not at all," Ginny said stiffly. "Would you like some tea?"

"How sweet of you." Daphne gave a short laugh. "How very hospitable, even though I suspect you'd rather throw the teacups at my head."

_Well, she's honest, I'll give her that._ "Are you always so diplomatic?" asked Ginny, warming up the teapot.

Daphne played with a gold bracelet on her wrist. "Believe me, Weasley, I don't want to be here one bit more than you want to have me in," she said.

"I suppose that answers my question." Ginny poured the tea and sat down. She wondered if she would jump out of the window screaming if she heard one single word more about the wedding, especially from someone who shared so much DNA with Astoria. _But I have to hear about it, don't I? Because if I don't, I'll never know why Daphne tried to stop it. That's if she really did, and if she didn't just come in here to gloat, or something._

"How did you get in here anyway?" she finally settled for asking. "It's a Shielded building."

Daphne took a sip and gave her a long look. Ginny had an uncomfortable feeling that she knew how carefully she herself had selected an opening question that didn't seem as if it could possibly lead to immediate wedding news.

"You know that Draco arranged for you to have this studio, don't you?" asked Daphne.

"Of course," said Ginny. Yes. She had known. She had never admitted it to herself, but the knowledge had probably been in her mind ever since Crumbleygrotts had handed her the key.

"You let him in here once. I could feel it on the door."

_Only three days ago,_ thought Ginny. _Unless you count the dream._ It already felt as if it had been a lifetime. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You'll see. I think that I know exactly when it must have been," said Daphne. "It was right before he told you that he was marrying my sister, wasn't it?"

"How did—"Ginny exclaimed. She shut her mouth tightly. Something was scratching at the inside of her chest with savage claws. "What does this have to do with the way _you_ got in?"

Daphne gave a bitter little smile. "Oh, it has everything to do with it, Weasley."

Ginny looked at the painful smile on Daphne Greengrass's face, and she knew for a moment that she didn't really want to understand exactly what it meant. The thing in her chest was rattling the bars of its cage now.

"If all you're going to do is to say cryptic things that don't make the least bit of sense," she said through gritted teeth, "then I think that you might as well leave. I need to get to work."

"I'm not leaving until I've said what I have to say," said Daphne. "I know that you don't want to hear it; well, I don't want to tell it, but I have to. I ran to the Ministry office as soon as I knew what was going on; Asta didn't tell me anything directly, of course."

"Then how did you find out—"

"You'll understand that part pretty soon. I arrived just in time to see them both leaving. There was nothing I could do. She was waving the certificate about, she wanted me to congratulate her, she insisted on pressing her hideously tacky bridal bouquet into her hand—all of it was tacky beyond words, by the way. It was a ten-minute affair in a back office, there wasn't even a cake, and her dress was almost as bad as _yours_. But if it makes you feel any better, Draco looked as if he were headed to his own funeral rather than a honeymoon. _She's_ the only one who was happy, and believe me, Weasley, she was overjoyed at getting what she wanted at last-"

The thing in Ginny's chest howled and nearly burst its cage, driving her to her feet. "I was right—you came here to fucking _gloat!_" she snarled. "Were you hoping to see me dissolve into a puddle of tears on the floor, or something? I won't, if that's you want. You can just tell Astoria that. I'm sure you're going straight to visit the happy couple on Vendetta Island after this. No—I don't want to hear it!" she added when Daphne tried to say something. "I don't want to hear one more fucking _word_ you have to say. Get out. Out. You're just as bad as your sister. You come into people's lives and take advantage of them, and you don't care who you hurt!"

"You don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, Weasley," snapped Daphne. "Do you think I would have _chosen_ to come to you? Do you think I would have degraded myself to the point where I'm actually begging you to listen to me? Do you think I like airing my family's dirty laundry this way? I don't. But I didn't choose. I never choose to do this when it happens. Never. But it's never been this strong before, and I just can't ignore it. I don't have the choice." Then she sagged back, as if her speech had taken all the energy out of her.

Ginny looked closely at Daphne for the first time. _She looks almost exactly like Astoria,_ she thought. _And yet… and yet she really doesn't at all._ Daphne had been a year ahead of her at Hogwarts, and she'd hadn't known her very well. She'd never even met Astoria then; she'd only heard that she'd gone to Durmstrang, so she'd never been able to compare the two sisters. But Astoria had a sharp, shallow selfishness that Daphne did not. Her face was restless and tense and troubled, without a trace of her sister's haughty, studied boredom. She was biting her lip, and the knuckles of her hands were white where she was clutching onto her hand-tooled leather bag. Daphne was afraid, Ginny realized. She just didn't understand anything about what was driving that fear.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"You might as well," said Daphne. "We don't have time for polite evasion."

"I think we're a bit past being polite," said Ginny. "Why would you have even wanted to stop your sister marrying Draco Malfoy? I'd have thought you'd be glad. Think of all the money he'll bring into your family, if nothing else."

"Because he's going to bring something else as well," Daphne said tightly. "I have to explain it to you. But gods, I don't want to!"

"You say that _you_ don't want to. If you didn't choose to come to me and tell me all of this, then who did?" asked Ginny.

Daphne twisted at a strap on her bag until Ginny thought it would snap. "It's not who, but what," she said in a low voice. "I can try to explain it—the thing that's driven me here- but how can I really make sense out of something inside you that pushes you to actions that almost seem out of your control, that has a will of its own? It's not your will, but it's too much for you to resist. I have to go where it sends me, and do what it gives me to do. Have you ever known anything like that, Weasley?"

"Yes," said Ginny, very quietly. "Call me Ginny, why don't you?" She got up to freshen the teapot, leaving Daphne to sit for a moment, staring into space.

Daphne let out all her breath in a long sigh and sipped at a hot cup of tea. Something had changed between them, a little bit at least, although Ginny still didn't really trust her. _But I'm for it now,_ she thought. _I have to know at least what the hell she's talking about._

"You remember Trelawney's Divination class, of course?" she asked.

Ginny rolled her eyes. "What a load of rubbish that was. Yes, of course I remember it."

"Not quite. _Trelawney_ was rubbish," said Daphne. "And I always thought that Divination was as well. But there was a day in sixth year when… when I found out that I was wrong." She began to speak very quickly, in clipped sentences, as if she wanted to get this part over with as fast as possible. "It was right before Christmas hols. You weren't there, of course. You weren't in the same year. But almost nobody else was either. Almost the whole class was gone. It was at the very end. We'd been doing tea leaves I was staying after to try to come up with something for a better grade. I was poking at the tea leaves and getting ready to make up some load of shite or other. That's when I saw." She stared into the cup of tea. "Alice Penhagen, that girl in my year—the Slytherin with straight brown hair and buck teeth and the annoying laugh, who was always following Draco Malfoy around? I just… _saw_ her, and I had a terrible feeling. I gasped and sort of fell backwards, it was so strong. Trelawney was in raptures, of course, but I couldn't bear her. I ran out of the room. I failed the class that term, because I wouldn't go back. Over Christmas hols, her father died in a Death Eater raid. It was hushed up."

"It could have been just a coincidence," Ginny said mechanically. She didn't believe it for a second. These were words to say while she tried to catch her breath.

Daphne laughed harshly. "It wasn't. There was something else, something I haven't told you. The very first time, I heard a strange sound right before I saw the vision of Alice Penhagen. I turned round, and I just caught a glimpse of someone out of the corner of my eye, an ugly hag. I thought it was Trelawney at the time, but then I saw it… her… before each and every time, and I knew who it was. The _bean-shìdh_. The Greengrasses are Scotch-Irish, you see."

"Oh gods," Ginny said faintly.

"She got to know me rather well, in time." Daphne shuddered. "Then I began to see visions of other people I knew. Not always the ones I knew _well_, but I had to at least know them slightly. Never anything specific. I'd just have a very strong impression of them, and I'd have the most terrible feeling. Then, within six months or so, something dreadful would happen. It wouldn't necessarily happen to the person I saw. Quite often, the thing would happen to a relative, or a close friend, or just someone else involved with whoever it was. Understand, death wasn't always involved, either. I once saw Pansy Parkinson, and as you probably know, that family ended up losing every cent they had after their trial before the Wizengamot. That was six months later. But it was always something horrible, and whoever I'd seen would always be somewhere right at the center of it. And it's always come true. Always."

"But I don't understand!" Ginny exclaimed. "Why haven't you been able to stop these things from happening, if you know they're going to?"

"It's not like that," sighed Daphne. "It's… well, maybe you'll understand a bit more if I go on explaining things. I already knew that Draco Malfoy was no good for my sister anyway; I had done for years, and I've been trying to tell her so just as long. She likely would have given up on her silly schoolgirl crush by now if his father hadn't been so fond of the idea of them marrying."

"Lucius Malfoy wanted Astoria to marry his son?" Ginny managed to ask.

Daphne looked at her as if considering whether or not to answer. "Well, yes. He would have liked it to happen very much. He was always a bit loony on the subject of what he called 'pureblood evolution', and the Greengrasses certainly fit the bill. But that doesn't matter now. The point is that Astoria never gave up, and neither did Mother. I suppose I should have known that this might happen, but I never believed that Draco would go through with it. And when I saw that it was going to happen, it was too late. It always seems to be too late. I don't know it it'll happen to my sister or to someone else. It just surrounds her, like a dark cloud. That's why I tried to stop the wedding—I've never felt so strongly before that there was something I actually _could_ do to stop the thing from happening, whatever it is. But I was too late."

Her words were dull and hopeless, and they seemed to clutch at Ginny's mind like the fingers of sad-eyed children who wanted to drag her someplace that she desperately didn't want to go. Abruptly, she crashed her teacup down on the table. "Why _me?_" she demanded. "Why do you say you didn't have any choice but to come and tell me, why are you trying to get me mixed up in this? I mean… I'm sure it's very sad, and I'm awfully sorry (_even though it's Astoria_, she mentally added), but it has nothing to do with me."

"Weren't you listening?" asked Daphne. " I told you that I see terrible things happening _around_ the people in my visions. I don't know what these things will be, and I don't know who will be affected. All I know is that it'll be someone who's deeply involved. And that description fits you to a T."

"I am not involved with Astoria Malfoy," said Ginny. She said the full name deliberately, feeling it cut across her skin like a Razor hex.

"You're involved with Draco. He's involved with Astoria."

"I am most certainly not involved with Draco Malfoy!"

"Why do you think I was able to get into your flat?" asked Daphne. "That's what I was trying to tell you before. Draco can get in. That means that _I_ can get in through my ties to him. The fey magic led me directly to you in Blaise Zabini's flat. Do you know how powerful that is? Oh, you're involved, Ginny Weasley."

"I refuse to become involved!" said Ginny.

Daphne leaned back. "You're rather determined not to be, aren't you?"

Ginny looked back at her defiantly. _I won't give her the satisfaction of either a yes or a no!_

She stirred her tea. "You don't have to answer this, you know… but my guess is that you _were_ involved. With Draco Malfoy, I mean."

Ginny lowered her head, but she was afraid that her expression had already told Daphne all she needed to know.

"The power led me here," said Daphne. "But I'll tell you something that's from me. Just me. I think that you're very wise to at least _try_ not to become further involved, where Draco Malfoy is concerned. Maybe it's the best thing you could do. He can be quite…consuming." She didn't say anything more for a few minutes, and Ginny thought about all the ways in which Daphne Greengrass was right.

"There's something else," said Daphne. "I wanted to try to warn you, even though I don't think it's going to do any good, and even though I'm not at all sure what I'm warning you of—whether it's for something, or against something, an action you should take, or one you should avoid. But there's a reason why I did it, and it's _not_ just because the power drove me. I wasn't quite truthful about that bit of it before. After you hear this, you can throw me out of your art studio on my arse, if you like."

"If I was going to do that," said Ginny, "I think that I already would have done it."

"Don't be so sure," said Daphne, smiling oddly. She looked right at Ginny, her eyes flat, and she began speaking in a monotone. "It was right after the end of your sixth year, a few months before the end of the war. I had several visions then, all involving people I knew, all terrible. I hardly had half a day's rest at a time from the _bean-shìdh_. We started having tea and biscuits together finally… she's not a bad sort, really, it's just that attending death and disaster is her job… anyway, I swore that I wouldn't put off telling you this, and I won't. I tried to tell people what I'd seen, but nobody ever wanted to hear about it, and I couldn't predict the time or the date or the place, or even what was going to happen, so everyone said I was imagining things, or under too much stress, and they kept offering me Calming drafts. Finally, I gave up. And then I had another vision." She bit her lip. "It was about you."

"About—me?" Ginny could hear her own voice going up an octave. "What do you mean?"

"The same as the rest. I just saw you, and felt that something terrible was going to happen. It was stronger than the others, though. I did think about telling you." Her eyes began to wander, as if on their own. She forced them back to Ginny. "But I'd already told so many people, and they didn't believe me. I didn't think—no. No, I've sworn that I'd tell the truth, and that isn't the whole truth, is it? You were a holy Gryffindor on the side of goodness and light, one of the wonderful Weasleys, all fighting for the Order, all on the side of truth, justice, and the memory of the sainted Dumbledore. I was a slinking Slytherin from a family of suspected Death Eaters, and if we weren't exactly working for Voldemort—and we _weren't_, not that anybody ever really believed it, for all that we were cleared by the Wizengamot—we still had the taint. We were in too deep with families like the Malfoys. We'd never associated with the right sort. I think I knew even then that your side was going to win the war—I suppose I've always had a touch of normal precognition as well—and I knew that we'd be despised. I was too proud to tell you, Ginny."

"But nothing happened to me-" said Ginny. She stopped. The horrible knowledge of what Daphne meant was forcing itself on her mind; in another moment, it would break through.

"No," Daphne said softly. "It happened to your brother, Fred. I was at the last battle, you know. I saw the _bean-shìdh_ coming for him, just after he died." She picked at the skin around her expensively manicured fingernails. "Do you blame me for not telling you?" she asked. "Do you hate me?"

"Do you want me to?" asked Ginny. "Would it soothe your conscience if I did?"

"I don't know," said Daphne. "Maybe. No, probably not."

Ginny thought about that. "I think…I think I wish I _could_ blame you," she finally said. "But I can't. I don't think it would've made any difference if you'd told me. We all knew that we were in danger anyway, we were all fighting. We couldn't have been more careful than we were."

"You're right. I suppose I was feeling guilty for nothing, all this time." Daphne gave the bitter little smile again. "Do you start to see the problem with this little psychic gift? It really doesn't make any difference. I never know anything that's specific enough to be of any help. Not then. Not now."

"Then why did you tell me?" asked Ginny.

"Because…" Daphne seemed to think about her answer. "Because no matter what, it's better to know as much as you can than to not know anything at all. That's what I think, anyway. The throwing-me-out-on-my-arse option is still quite open, you know."

"Yes, it is," said Ginny. "You're right, though. About the knowing, I mean. But I still don't see how I can be tied up in this thing when…" She forced herself to go on. "When Draco Malfoy's let go of me." _I won't explain what I mean,_ she thought rather grimly. _Let her figure it out. Or not. There's a limit to the female-confession-time thing, I don't care how well we're getting on._

"I don't think you do understand yet. You don't know Draco very well, do you?" asked Daphne.

_No,_ thought Ginny. She said nothing.

"When he lets go of someone, he really lets go. He doesn't hold on one little bit. And that person is… well, dead to him in that way, you could say. Oh, I don't mean that he really goes about killing people; don't think that. But goodbye means goodbye for him, Ginny Weasley."

"He said goodbye to you once, didn't he?" Ginny asked, regretting her tone of voice as soon as she heard it coming out of her mouth. She hadn't meant to sound nasty, but she hadn't been able to help it, somehow.

"He did," said Daphne without much rancor. "But I never expected much of anything from him in the first place. We were together for a bit when he was still at Hogwarts, that was all. I knew better than to ask more of Draco than he was going to give. Astoria didn't. She never has."

"What's your point, Daphne?"

"Just this. You may have _thought_ he said goodbye to you. But if the power was still strong enough to lead me here, then there's a bond between you that hasn't been broken. He hasn't really said it at all."

_He hasn't said it at all. Draco never said it at all. He didn't… he didn't say... but he did. He has._

"No matter what he said to me, or didn't say, or meant, or didn't mean, the fact is that he married your sister two days ago," said Ginny. "You couldn't stop them." She laughed harshly. "_I_ certainly couldn't stop them. Nothing I did made any difference. Draco just went on and did it. I can't be like Astoria, Daphne. I can't hold on, and wait, and expect more than he can give."

Daphne nodded. "I wish that she could have been that wise. And I wish that I could tell you something more specific about what might happen. Believe me, I would if I could. But I never can. Who knows—maybe there's something you can do to avoid it. Maybe steering clear of Draco Malfoy will do the trick. "She picked up her purse and stood to go. "And once Lovegood wakes up, tell her that I wasn't fucking Blaise, all right? They'd be good together."

"All right," was all that Ginny could think of to say. She stared at the closed door for a long time after Daphne left.

The little cuckoo popped out of the clock.

"If you want to earn a wage  
And you don't care to be fired  
Then do take my advice sage  
Or someone else may just be hired! Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Get to work, you lazy slag!"

Ginny glared at the wooden bird. She was _definitely_ buying a new clock tomorrow. _Unless… oh dear, unless I really am about to get fired… and in that case, I'll be living in a cardboard box on the street and I'll just have to listen for Big Ben!_


	29. Someone Moved Ginny's Cheese

On her way out, Ginny caught sight of her reflection in the front room mirror. She thought briefly that her hair hadn't improved one bit since she'd first seen it that morning. Every single strand still seemed to be sticking out on end. She patted at it ineffectually.

"I'd give up if I were you. And sweetheart, you can't possibly mean to go out in public wearing that dress?" the mirror moaned.

"Believe me, if I had any choice, I wouldn't." She glanced at the crumpled heap of clothing from the night before, balled up against the wall next to the bathroom door. Maybe it really wasn't _that_ dirty… Oh, yes it was. She doubted she'd ever get all the mud of out of her jumper. Out of _Draco's_ jumper.

"I suppose you don't have a choice. Yet the lesser of two evils is still evil, isn't it," the mirror said gloomily.

"You can say that again," muttered Ginny.

"The lesser of—"

"Oh, shut it!" Ginny stomped out the door. _All_ of the inanimate objects in the art studio seemed to be taking on distinctly irritating mannerisms lately.

She walked slowly down the stairs, wondering what on earth she was going to _say_ once she got to Sans and Serif. What kind of excuse could she give? _A jealous ex dragged me on a mission to save a friend from the clutches of a male slut? I don't think that'll sound very convincing to my boss, somehow. An evil bitch's sister—sorry, Daphne—told me that the bitch had six months to live, and I'd somehow be involved? I think that Mrs. Fustian would just say that if the dirty deed was six months away, surely I'd have time to plan the murder properly and it was no reason to be seven hours late for work. _  
Her steps slowed down, and she noted abstractedly that the breeze outside was blowing the leaves of the elm trees in pretty patterns. She thought she saw something fly through the branches, just out of the corner of her eye. Then another something. She kept going down the stairs.

_Hmmm… I wonder if that's what Daphne meant? Am I destined to kill Astoria in the next six months? I hope not. I really don't think she's worth going to Azkaban over._

Ginny paused at the front door, trying to remember if strictly _inevitable_ deaths would be covered under wizarding homicide law. If Astoria's own sister had predicted it, then there could hardly be any way to avoid it, could there? Of course, if she herself actually committed the murder, that fact still might be a bit hard to get round. _On the other hand, no all-female jury would ever vote to convict… _She looked out the window, thinking. Then she gasped.

Several owls were flying in confused circles around her building, each with a parchment in its claws. Ginny counted at least two red Howlers. A couple of the smaller owls had given up and were taking naps in nearby trees. The largest, a Southern Boobook, was still flapping determinedly about. It zoomed directly past her nose, and Ginny stepped back. It still couldn't see her, of course; none of them could, because she was in a Shielded area, but _she'd_ gotten a closeup view. Her name was stamped on the outside of the parchment.

_Oh dear._

Had any of these owls been there earlier? The harder Ginny tried to remember, the less sure she was. The problem was that she knew she wouldn't necessarily have noticed them; the only time she'd been outside of the building's Shield that day was when she was first talking to Colin and Dean, and then the Descopera spell would have hidden her from them as well. _Of course, I could have still seen them… if I'd been looking for them._ But she'd been so distracted during all that time that she probably wouldn't have noticed a Muggle airplane unless it had flown directly into her face.

And then there was the problem of who they were from. _Draco Malfoy?_ The idea popped into her head before she could stop it, but as quickly as it had come, she dismissed it. She couldn't imagine him doing anything as loony as sending multiple owls, and there seemed to be no point anyway when he could clearly march right into the building if he wanted to. _Harry, then?_ That idea sounded more reasonable than the other, but it still didn't seem to match up. Harry, she thought, would have been much likely to send someone from the Ministry to nab her as soon as she walked out of the building. But he knew now that he couldn't get away with that. Maybe he really _had_ sent the owls…

They all tried to fly at her in a body as soon as she emerged from the protective Shield, but she instantly cast a Confundus charm and then ignored the collisions and cacophony of squawking. There seemed to be no point in worrying about any of it just then. _Circe knows, there's more than enough to be going on with,_ she thought.

Ginny hung about the rear entrance of Sans and Serif until she saw the vending machine supplier open the door with a case of rather dejected-looking chocolate frogs. She slipped in just behind him. He was reading the afternoon edition of the _Daily Prophet_ and didn't seem to be paying any attention to her, unless—Had he just given her an odd look? No. Surely not.

Her floor was very quiet, and she didn't see a soul. If she could make it down to her desk without being seen, then it was at least conceivable that she might, just _might_, get by with being so hideously late. _Maybe I could work all night to make up for it…_ She tiptoed down the dimly lit corridor, trying not to think about the brilliant spring sunshine outside, or the fact that even if she did get away with this, she'd be spending yet another evening cooped up in an airless, hermetically sealed cubicle, staring at a computer screen and designing patterns for… _what is it this week?_ Ginny tried to remember. The decorative trimming surrounding typed copy printed on the instructions for Floo vomit bags, she thought. The floral edging on the toilet paper rolls for Fussy Flushers, Ltd., had been _last_ week.

_Maybe the Victory statue really was a masterpiece after all, compared to that,_ she thought gloomily, edging past closed doors that would hopefully remain closed for just thirty more seconds. But she knew it hadn't been. At least floral toilet paper was useful. That statue had been smarmy and simpering. _Wish I'd had it insured. Then maybe I could've got some cash out of breaking it._

The door to the corner office loomed up in her path. If she could just get past this one, then it would be clear sailing, _if_ being the tricky operative word. Of course, she'd been thinking very much the same thing every time she walked past it for about the last three months. _That bitch would absolutely love to see me thrown out of here on my arse,_ thought Ginny. _And here I am, giving her the perfect excuse. Oh, fuck…_ Ginny held her breath and walked on tiptoe. Almost… _almost_…

The door creaked open. "Ginny, dear!" said a sugary voice. "How nice it is to finally _see_ you."

Ginny gulped and looked into the large, heavily made-up face of Mrs. Fustian, head of the second-tier decorative subdivision of the underlayment of the graphic design department. As usual, her smile was strongly reminiscent of an alligator that had gone just a little too long between feedings at the zoo.

"I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Fustian," she said, deciding that her only hope was to make a clean breast of the entire thing. "Something came up that I just couldn't get out of, and then—"

"Oh, but of course it did, dear!" trilled Mrs. Fustian. "Of _course_! I _quite_ understand. How dreadfully stressful everything must have been for you these past few days. One can only endure so much, after all. Perhaps you might want to rest a bit, after your recent ordeals."

"Er— I'm glad you understand-" Ginny stopped. Mrs. Fustian was normally about as understanding as a starved nundu thrown a fresh T-bone steak and then asked to share it with a flock of bunny rabbits. Something was very wrong here.

"Uh, thanks," she finally said. "I think I'd better get to my desk now and start on those designs for the Floo vomit bags."

"Oh, _no!_" trilled Mrs. Fustian. "No no no _no._ I don't think you're quite up to it, dear, not after the recent series of unfortunate events."

"Unfortunate—what are you talking about?" demanded Ginny. She had a sinking feeling that she already knew the answer to her own question. _I'd like to assign Rita Skeeter her own personal demons to torture her in hell. I wonder if that could be arranged? Didn't Draco say that he was related to Satan… no._ But there did seem to be something more to this than just what had been written in the gossip columns in the past few days, she thought.

Mrs. Fustian's smile turned poisonous, and the sinking feeling sunk even further. She patted her hand. Ginny snatched her arm back. As she did, she hit something feathery. She whipped round to confront the Southern Boobook owl. It looked back at her, hoo-hooting triumphantly.

"They've been here simply all _morning_, dear," said Mrs. Fustian. "They're rather disrupting the workplace. A very good reason to go home, don't you think?"

The owl was clutching a copy of the afternoon _Daily Prophet_ in its claws, Ginny saw. "_What's going on?_" she asked in a quavering voice.

Mrs. Fustian shrugged. "Well, there came a point, my dear, where she simply seemed to give up on letters and began sending copies of the story instead. I must say, I can see the sense of it."

"_She?_" The entire thing was beginning to make sense. Horrible, awful sense.

"My goodness, but you're getting yourself worked up, Ginny dear," cooed Mrs. Fustian. "I think that you really shouldn't avoid the inevitable any longer. I think that it's time to go home and owl your dear, _dear_ mother. Don't you? And really dear… you'll be far too busy to come back afterwards, I'm sure." The awful smile widened.

Ginny heard the sound of rushing wings. She looked up to see the owl dive-bombing her head. Covering her face with her hands, she ran screaming from the office, the owl chasing her all the way.

She could see that people were turning to stare at her as she ran out onto the street; well, it made sense, she supposed, seeing as how she was still screaming and beating ineffectually with her hands at a crazed owl. Finally, she grabbed the paper from its claws and used it as a bat. The owl gave a frightened squawk and flew away.

Ginny ducked under an awning and threw the paper open to the gossip page. Rita's sharklike face smirked up at her, the red-lipsticked mouth chewing on a Quick-Quotes quill. She gave Ginny a wink. The urge to claw her paper face to shreds was almost irresistible. _No. No! I have to find out what she actually said in the latest hideous installment. And there are about a zillion more copies of it out there, anyway._

_Baby, Come Home! Ginny's Miserable Mum Implores Her Little Girl Lost  
We already knew that heartless hottie Draco Malfoy's latest specialty is ensnaring innocents in his wickedly sinister web, from the youngest Weasley to the wide-eyed Astoria nee Greengrass (remember yours truly's exclusive pix of that dubious wedding, which poor Asta's chilly sis Daphne didn't bother to attend?) But now the malicious Malfoy's spread sorrow all the way to Ginny's long-suffering mum, the marvelous Molly. In a stunning public appeal, the Weasley matriarch throws herself on the mercy of le Malfoy (although, as my faithful readers know by now, that quality is sadly absent in the heart of the dragon we love to hate.)_

"I just pray that my baby is safe and sound," she moans in words that would melt the most withered soul (although this doesn't work too well on Draco Malfoy, who came packaged with evil, spice, and everything un-nice, but not the aforementioned article.) "But I don't know what to think anymore. Ginny hasn't answered any of my owls. I'm so afraid that Malfoy's warped her mind, and turned her against everyone and everything she loves. She's so delicate, so fragile, and he could manage it so easily. And then he ran off with his next victim, that unfortunate, misled Astoria Greengrass, and he broke my baby's heart. If she'd only come back to us, we can see that she gets a long stay at St. Mungo's, a nice rest. I'm sure we could reserve some very special rooms for her. If she'd only come home—"

Ginny's valiant mum broke down after this pitiful appeal, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house, including yours truly. Can this reporter offer a suggestion? Perhaps the tragic Ginny will finally find refuge with her first love, Harry Potter. Ah, but what about the stalwart Granger, you ask? "Hermione's strong enough to let him go," says an unnamed source of our acquaintance. "She'd be willing to step aside for the good of the most wounded and fragile Weasley—and it would be best for everyone if she does it." Oi! Harry! Time to step in and rescue the poor lost Weasley waif—oh, Ginny, don't!

Ginny ignored Rita Skeeter's terrified shrieks, grimly ripped the paper into tiny shreds, and quite clearly pronounced a string of swear words that would have done her brothers proud. Then she looked about for a rubbish can to throw the shreds into. It was very important to avoid littering, after all. _How convenient. There one is, right on the corner._ She stepped out of the shelter of the awning, and all thoughts of civic responsibility fled her mind at once.

Harry was coming down the street towards her.

Ginny ran the other way, darted into a narrow alley, and flattened herself against a door, gasping. _He didn't see me yet. He can't have seen me. Surely he would have said something if he had, or waved at me, or tried to hit me with a Stunning spell. I mean, he would… wouldn't he? Hmm, this alley looks kind of familiar…_

Cautiously, she peeked her head round the wall. Harry had turned the corner and was still walking towards her. Without a second thought, she pulled at the door, breathed a sigh of relief to find it open, and ran through it.  
She immediately realized why the alley had seemed familiar. She'd been hidden right behind that door, watching Draco and Astoria snarling at each other in it only two days earlier. That meant that she was now standing in the back of the Bas-Bleu gallery. _Oh dear._ Ginny really, really couldn't have said that it was on her top ten list of places she would have wanted to be at that moment. _Ouch._ On top of everything else, she had just run into what seemed to be a large model of a half-deflated marble balloon.

"_Ginny!_" exclaimed Tony Goldstein from a distance of approximately one inch, causing her to jump at least a foot in the air. "Whatever are you doing in here? Colin Creevey just called me; he's been looking for you. He _thought_ he saw you going this way."

She forced a smile. _I wish everyone would stop looking for me. The main problem is that they always seem to find me. Oh, gods, if everybody would just go away and leave me alone for a little while!_ "Hi, Tony. I'll let him know I'm all right."

"Well, whatever you do, don't go outside now that you're here. Harry Potter's looking for you as well, Merlin only knows why but it can't be for a good reason. Of course, it's not as if staying here is your best option either, but sometimes you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Zenobia's on the warpath today—Corellia Seaberg just pulled out her entire _Unbearable Roundness of My Soul_ sculpture series, and it's left a very unattractive sort of blank hole in the main gallery." He jerked his thumb towards the group of large stone blobs behind them. "Zenobia _was_ talking about rolling them all down the sidewalk and into incoming traffic, but I convinced her that it wouldn't be good business. Honestly, the things I do for that woman…" His eyes widened in horror. "Ginny! She's coming down the hall right this minute and she's got that look in her eye. You've got to hide somewhere. Hurry!"

Ginny whipped her head round frantically from side to side, but there really didn't seem to be anywhere and the room was entirely filled with the hard, globby things. She ran back and forth, trying to duck behind first one and then another, but the problem was that each one seemed to have a lot of large holes in it, as if pricked by a giant pin.

"Your hair's going to show through," hissed Tony. "Get down! Here—try this one, I think it's your only chance—"

The largest blob was half-hollowed out in the middle, and Ginny, wriggled into the space, squashing herself down as much as she could. She was sure that part of one leg was still sticking out, and something sharp was digging into her bum. _This,_ she thought miserably, _is the absolute low point of my entire life._

It certainly seemed like a reasonable statement, considering everything that had happened recently. Shortly after Daphne had told her that she was deeply involved with an inevitable death curse, she had been fired from her job and chased by crazed owls. Both her mother and Harry Potter were currently trying to hunt her down, and it was hard to say which was worse. Rita Skeeter was relentlessly writing daily gossip columns about her that ranged from excessively nasty to sickeningly sympathetic. And, of course, all of this was on top of the fact that Draco Malfoy had charged into her life, turned it completely upside down, ruthlessly driven her to the point of sexual desperation, and then dropped her and married Astoria Greengrass.

Ginny leaned her head on the cool marble, remembering her happy, tremulous excitement from the morning. _I don't know who I am. But I'm going to find out._ Easy to say, before life started up again and seized her by the throat. If everyone would leave her alone, just leave her _alone_, so that she could stay very still and quiet for awhile and listen for the little voice inside herself, the one that was so sure and strong—

A pair of painfully high heels clattered into the room.

"No, Zen," said Tony's voice. "Corellia hasn't been by to pick them up yet, so why stop back here? It's so dusty. Achoo! Aren't your allergies acting up? No, there's nothing back there. Why would you think there is? How about a nice cup of tea? I'll put some firewhiskey in it. No! Really, Zen, don't go back there—I mean it—"

A hand grasped onto Ginny's arm and pulled her out of the center of the blob. Zenobia Smith's rather amused face looked down at her.

"Well, well," she said. "_Living_ sculpture. Your includsion can only improve that piece, of course, but then, so would a legion of mutant flobberworms."

"Ginny Weasley was thinking about purchasing it," Tony said quickly. "She needed a closeup view. It's just like you've always said- there's nothing like seeing art from the inside if you want to really understand it, and—"

"Run along, Tony," Zenobia said dismissively, her dark eyes still on Ginny. "I won't bite."

She looked at her shrewdly. Ginny stood up with as much dignity as she could manage and stared back defiantly. After all, the day couldn't really get any worse.

"I think that you've probably discovered the best use for Corellia's artwork," said Zenobia. "If you added a cushion or two, I imagine that it would make for quite a good sleeping space."

_I'll be on my way now, if you don't mind,_ Ginny would have said, except that she couldn't very well leave. Given the fact that Harry was probably waiting for her outside the door, facing a herd of sarcastic gallery owners would be far preferable. She said nothing.

Zenobia lit a Gauloise with an engraved gold lighter from the pocket of her severely cut black suit and took a long puff. She held a copy of the _Daily Prophet_ under her other arm, Ginny now saw, and she immediately revised her earlier opinion. The day could _always_ get worse.

"Why did you come into my gallery just now, Miss Weasley?" she asked.

"That's my business," said Ginny. "Are you going to call the Ministry and have a bunch of Aurors sent to throw me out?"

"That would seem rather redundant, wouldn't it? If darling Tony is correct, that is. He's under the impression that Harry Potter was in hot pursuit and is currently prowling about in the street, waiting for you to emerge."

Reluctantly, Ginny nodded.

Zenobia tapped the paper. "So you're not going to allow him to… what was the phrase… 'rescue the poor lost waif'?"

Ginny bristled. What the hell made this woman think that she had any right to question her this way? "No, I'm not," she snapped. "I don't want anything to do with him." _And if it wasn't for the fact that I can't afford to have you throw me out just now, I'd whip out my wand and hex you from here to eternity!_

Zenobia smiled. "Good. You don't exactly strike me as the waiflike sort, Ginny Weasley."

"What exactly do you mean?" Ginny asked cautiously.

The smile broadened, and Ginny couldn't help thinking that there was something genuine about it. "Rita Skeeter really is the most poisonous bitch, isn't she?" asked Zenobia.

It was very hard to disagree with that particular statement, so Ginny nodded again.

The brunette took another long drag on her cigarette. "I've seen some of your design work for Sans and Serif, you know."

"Really."

"It was utter trash."

Ginny's fists tightened involuntarily. _Ooh…_

"The tripe they set you to do, I mean." Zenobia waved her hand with its long red fingernails. "But I knew instantly that it was yours. You see, Miss Weasley, your art lacks maturity and polish and finish. There's something essentially unrealized in it, something almost childish…"

_That's it! I'm leaving. I'd rather take my chances with Harry than listen to any more of this._ Ginny started towards the door without a word. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm not finished," said Zenobia, turning her round. "Even though all of these things are true, I see the seed of something remarkable in you, Ginny Weasley."

"What are you talking about?" exclaimed Ginny. "You hated the _Victory_ statue! You practically threw it at me, and then you were hideously rude-"

"Oh, don't take that too seriously," said Zenobia. "It's not a matter of whether I'm rude to _you_, you see, but whether I'm more polite to anyone else. I assure you that I'm not. I once told the queen that she needed to update her hairstyle more often that once in every fifty years, you know." She winked, and Ginny suddenly wondered exactly how old she really was.

"The point," Zenobia went on, "is that there is a uniqueness in you. A singularity that appears only in the best artists, and that shines through any other quality. In short, you have talent. Perhaps it will even turn to genius someday—who knows? But don't get ahead of yourself yet on that one. You're still very young, and life has touched you so very little."

Ginny's brow furrowed. _What a strange, strange day this is turning out to be._

"I should like to see more of your art," said Zenobia. "Particularly since I now have an appalling amount of space to fill in my gallery. Do you have anything available at the present time?"

_My art! She wants to see my art. She'd be willing to place it here on commission, that has to be what she means. Oh, my gods, I could actually make some money this way! Which would be good, because now that I've been fired from my job, I really will end up in a cardboard box on the street performing magic tricks for knuts otherwise._

"Um—yes! Of course, of course, sure I do," babbled Ginny. "I mean, almost. I mean, I'm working on a big piece right now." She glanced frantically about the room for inspiration. "Sculptures. That's it. A sculpture. A triptych."

"I would love to see them. What's the theme?"

"Uh…" _Blank. Blank. Blank._ There seemed to be no ideas left in the world. _Think of something! Hurry up! There has to be some topic in the universe! I haven't had breakfast yet… a coffee and cinnamon scone sculpture, maybe… oh fuck, that wouldn't fool anybody with a rudimentary brain. Ginny, think._ A cavalcade of images from the last few days ran through her mind. A cottage, a stormy night, licking flames in a fireplace. A fringe of silvery-blond hair over a fallen angel's face, bending over hers as he—no, that would _not_ be a good subject for sculpture. Random items she'd seen cascaded past her inner eye. A tiny crate mushrooming in size when she cast a charm on it, a lock that opened to a curl of her hair. A wreath of dried summer daisies. A drawing of a woman sleeping, labeled _Marie._ A photograph of a sixteen-year-old Draco, painfully young and eager and innocent, Draco Malfoy before the fall. A couple of books… she hadn't even noticed the titles at the time but they had somehow registered in her mind and she did remember them now…

_On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. That book was used in the Carrows' class during my sixth year, I remember that now. It had to do with Muggle theories about evolution. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Evolution… that was Lucius Malfoy's idea too, the obsession about the evolution of a perfect pureblood race. But I think the Carrows started out using those books and then they didn't like them, because they didn't support their ideas about purebloods. Lucius Malfoy thought exactly the same things, believed all the same things… what does it all mean? What can it all mean? Why can it still seem so important now, when he's dead? Why does it still haunt me?_

"Evolution," blurted Ginny. "That's the theme. The evolution of the wizarding world."

Zenobia gave her a long, thoughtful look. "Fascinating," she said. "I would very much like to see what you make of that, Miss Weasley. How close are you to any sort of finished product?"

"I'll, uh, have the maquettes ready soon," Ginny said rather wildly.

"Perfect," said Zenobia. "Bring them by the moment you do. Tony, dearest!" she called over her shoulder. "Escort Miss Weasley out, please. I do believe that Potter's moved on."

"How can you be so sure about that?" asked Ginny, startled.

Zenobia shrugged eloquently. "In the past eighteen hundred years, my dear, let's just say that I've picked up a few things."

_I don't even want to know,_ thought Ginny.

Back at her studio, she sifted through the Victory pieces on the floor, thoughtfully. She tried to fit a few of them together like bits of a puzzle, then moved them round on the floor, matching a bit of a lip to a scrap of a toe, grafting an ear onto a leg until she had created an odd, mutant thing. Finally, she got up, feeling how stiff her knees were and how they throbbed where they'd been pressing against the wooden floor. _It's as if the answer's here, somewhere,_ she thought. _But I just can't quite find it._

The pink dress was covered with dust and bits of marble, which provided a perfect excuse for ripping it off and setting it afire with a satisfying burst of green flame, Ginny decided. The only problem was that she now had nothing at all to wear. She stirred at the rumpled, muddy clothing from last night with her wand, and began to put together the Cleaning charm. _None of this would be necessary if I just had a washer and dryer. I really ought to get them here. Of course, I'll be lucky if I can afford a jar of peanut butter to get me through the rest of the month, so it's Cleaning charms for now,_ she thought.

The sweater shook itself and began to vibrate in the air. The filthy shoes followed, then the jeans. Something fell out of the pockets—no, several things, small and square. Ginny caught the things and cupped them in her hand, squinting down at them, realization flooding in on her. They came from the first crate that Draco had put in the pocket of his cloak, the one she'd opened at the cottage. She'd shoved them in her pocket at random and then forgotten them. She stirred them with her finger, knowing that she couldn't take off the Shrinking spell until the clothes were cleaned. They were too small for her to even tell what they were. She wondered what she would find, and her heart whispered wishes that her mind did not want to hear.


	30. She Just Can't Seem to Move On

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially Victoria Kathleen Wright and Phanie Malfoy.

Ginny stared at the clothing as it whirled and revolved in the air. The tiny shrunken things that had fallen out of her pockets felt burning hot in the palm of her hand. _Draco's things._ Whatever they were, he'd touched them. He'd once owned them. They'd been important enough to him to hide in that crate. They could even be things she'd never had a chance to look at that night. She'd grabbed them at random when she'd heard him trying to get in the door, after all.

_Yes,_ whispered her heart._That's it. There's something I can use. Something that will help… something that will draw me to him…_

_No,_ said her mind.

_Oh, yes there is. I can feel it._

_All right, so maybe you do. But I'm still telling you, no, no, no! You've got to stop this and stop it now. Don't you remember what just happened at Bas-Bleu? You promised Zenobia Smith that you'd bring in a whole bunch of clay models of your sculptures as soon as possible! You know what a mad promise that was to make, you know you don't really have time. The only hope you have of getting it down is to start right now. You need to do your art, Ginny. Don't you remember what you were thinking this morning? You need to find yourself, to evolve, to grow. And you've got to stop obsessing over Draco Malfoy or you'll never manage any of it._

_I have to at least know what it is, that thing I feel, the one that would help me,_ said her heart. _I don't have any choice._ And that felt like nothing more than the truth; Ginny wanted to see the secret so desperately that she didn't think she could wait another moment. Her desire was thick and hot and frantic, spreading through her veins like the tendrils of a poisonous flower.

_You don't have to know. Holding onto this rubbish is the worst idea you've ever had, and if you go through with it, you'll regret it. For the love of gods, don't do it,_ her mind ordered sternly, doing its best to cut across the feverish feelings that were running higher and higher. _Throw all of it out, now. Ginny, you've got to move on. Draco certainly has. _

_No, he hasn't! Daphne said that the bond hadn't been broken._

The voice snorted. _If marrying Astoria Greengrass doesn't count as breaking the bond, then what does? And what kind of bond do you think there really was to begin with, anyway?_

_An important one. I just know it,_ her heart cried. _Not that you'd understand. Not that you care._

_I do care; that's why I'm trying to make you see! And you're going to listen to me, whether you like it or not. You're stuck with me. We're both in the same body._ Her mind went on ruthlessly, even as she struggled not to listen. _There's so much proof; look at everything that happened in the past, everything that led up to this. The two of you probably didn't exchange ten words during all your years together at Hogwarts. Your families are bitter enemies, and probably have been since the first fish grew legs and crawled out of the ocean. Then, he knelt before that filthy thing, Voldemort, and took the Dark Mark at sixteen-_

_No, you're wrong._ Her heart dismissed it immediately. _And what about everything that happened after that? What about the way Draco looked at me on the train going to Hogwarts on the first day of term, as if he were really seeing me for the first time, and the way he looked at me at the Christmas party, and the time I found him crying in the Room of Requirement and I took him in my arms and almost kissed him, and the way I stroked his forehead when he was up in the infirmary after Harry hexed him and he opened his eyes and stared up at me, and… oh, so many things. What about them?_

_Yes, what about them?_ her mind retorted. _Nothing ever went on to the point of happening, did it? How do you know that any of it really meant anything? You touched him, but he never touched you. You almost kissed him, but he never kissed you, Ginny. You only thought that he would. How do you know what he was thinking? Why are you so sure?_

_Well, I—I mean, it's because he-_ Her heart faltered. _Look, it doesn't matter, and you'll never convince me that it does. I'm Enlargening these things as soon as the Cleaning spell's done. I mean it. I am. And then-_

_No, no, listen to me!_ said her mind. _Listen to the rest. Draco was rubbish at being a Death Eater, true, but then this isn't an exercise in trying to prove how evil he is. He couldn't kill Dumbledore, so he had to flee Hogwarts. Did he say goodbye to you, Ginny? Did he send you a message? No? So, after the Malfoys provided house room for Voldemort for over a year- charming guest, I'm sure—Draco turned up again at the last battle._

_He didn't fight on the wrong side,_ her heart said, with an air of triumph. _There's good in him, I just know there is._

_Yes, maybe there is, but I told you; I'm not trying to set him up as some sort of Sinister Slytherin Prince of Darkness. The point here, Ginny, is that he walked right past you as you cried for Fred. He didn't stop to comfort you._

_Neither did Harry!_

_I didn't see you rushing to meet Harry half an hour ago when you saw him outside Bas-Bleu,_ her mind said slyly.

_Uh… um… wait,_ her heart said suddenly. _Here's something you've forgotten. Draco came to me in the corridor at Hogwarts the night of the last battle. He looked at me. He put his hand to my face. He wanted me to come away with him, somewhere , I don't know where, but wherever it was, if he'd just kept looking at me that way a bit longer, I would have gone with him. Go ahead; tell me I'm wrong all you like, but I know I'm right._

_I won't tell you that you're wrong,_ said her mind. _But do you remember what happened then? You slapped him, and he went away._

_I saw the Dark Mark on his arm,_ her heart whispered.

_You did. But that wasn't the only reason you hit Draco Malfoy. He started to call you by another name. You didn't know then what that name was, but you know it now, don't you? He started to call you Marie._

That bit of her mind seemed to lapse into silence then. Remembering that night, Ginny knew that what it had reminded her of was true.

Six months had passed after the war without her hearing anything from him. Then he'd disappeared for an entire year and a half. She hadn't seen him during all that time, and neither had anybody else, as far as she knew. He certainly hadn't sent her any messages, or let her know what he was doing. He'd never given her any reason to think that he would. The first she'd _ever_ seen him after the war had been right after the sex-with-a-skank incident with Harry, in fact. Then she'd seen him several times, but she'd known him only as a callous playboy who couldn't have cared less about her. She'd risked so much for him over the past few days, and she didn't even know why.

Ginny stared at the jumper and jeans as they swirled and tangled in the air, and the unpalatable facts whirled round and round right along with them.

_Don't you see what I'm talking about now?_ her mind pleaded. _There's just no proof that you and Draco Malfoy ever had a bond—yes, yes, I know what Daphne Greengrass said, but is she really the most reliable source? What do you know about her motivations for coming here? You enjoyed what Draco did for you at the cottage, but Ginny, let's be honest—you've never been in the hands of an expert before. It was nothing but physical pleasure, not really. That's why you've got to listen to me. That's why you can't hold onto him. Ginny, you have to move on._

_I can't,_ her heart whimpered. _I can't._ She shifted position on the floor. Her entire body seemed to be aching, so she got up and sat in a chair. That didn't help a bit. She squirmed. Ginny gasped in horror. _Oh, no, oh no…_

It wasn't only her own heart working against her, or her feelings. She could have fought those. It was her hungry, newly awakened body, remembering what Draco had done to her, crying out for him to do it all again, wanting him to come back and do more and more and _more_. Wanting him to do everything. Ginny groaned and sunk her head in her hands as the memories attacked her. She had given pieces of herself, of her experience, to Draco Malfoy, and she could never get them back. She had known when he'd done it that he didn't love her, and the worst part of all was she couldn't regret one bit of it. _I'd do it again. I want to do it again right now! Fuck, what's wrong with me!_

_You're clearly going mad, Ginny; that's what's wrong with you,_ her rational mind tried to point out. _You need to stop this right now, while you still can._

_Mind, you've convinced me at last. I really don't think we should do this,_ her heart agreed.

_Shut it, both of you,_ the dark voice of obsession snarled. _Draco's mine. Mine, mine, and I'm going to have him. I'll find a way. And it's here, I'll bet it's here in this handful of things from the crate!_

_But… but why would you even think that; we didn't find anything that would have been useful in that way before…_ her heart said weakly.

In answer, the obsession produced an image of what Ginny had imagined just before she'd opened the crate at the cottage, two nights ago.

_A decapitated house-elf head, an extra Horcrux, or… or a cursed diamond necklace that she would forced to try on anyway. She couldn't keep herself from doing it. She would open the lid of the crate and there it would be, and she'd stare at it helplessly. Draco would come up behind her suddenly and wrap the jewels around her neck, pulling the strands so tight that she was almost breathless. "Surrender, Weasley," he would whisper, until she melted back into his arms. _

Her breath came short, and her eyes went unfocused. The clothes neatly folded themselves and floated down to the table in a stack. Ginny's wand glowed blue briefly, indicating that it was free to cast other spells again. She laid the things in her palm next to the clothing and touched her wand to them. The voices of both her heart and mind tried to protest, but she ignored them. A tremendous throbbing had started in her head, and the sound made it impossible to hear anything else. _Engorgio,_ she said.

On the table, several books mushroomed to normal size. Ginny grabbed them.

"_ On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life_? _The Structure of Evolutionary Theory_? _An Extremely Educational Sciencey-Type Book by a Friendly Famous Scientist who Explains Science to You, Whoever You May Be_?" Incredulously, she read the titles aloud. "What's this shite?"

The first book had fallen open to its frontispiece, which showed a sepia photograph of a muttonchop-whiskered author in Victorian dress. "I say," he ventured in a tinny voice, "is it strictly necessary to use such objectionable language? I am not accustomed to hearing anything of the sort from a lady, which you do appear to be—"

Ginny slammed the book shut, feeling a moment of shame. But it only ended up causing yet another rush of heat through her body, which was the last thing she needed at that particular moment. "There's got to be something," she muttered desperately, pawing through the books with shaking hands. "Something. Oh, gods, there's got to be… _Nature's Nobility: The Extended Edition._ She remembered that book from the crate, but she hadn't seen anything in it to make it even one bit more helpful than the others. Ginny leaned against the table, feeling the first tears leak out from under her closed eyelids. There was one more book, just one. She pulled it out.

But it wasn't a book at all. It was the framed photograph she had seen that night, the one that had been taken when Draco had just turned sixteen years old. He leaned against a gold and white pillar, his formal dress robes a little crumpled, his silvery-blond fringe of hair falling in his beautiful, arrogant face. He was asleep. She groaned.

He yawned, stretched, and blinked. "Is it morning already?" he muttered, sounding grumpy. "I was trying to _sleep_. What the fuck was that noise- _oh!_"

Draco saw her. His big silvery-gray eyes lit up. Then he gave her a smile so open and so trusting that she never would imagined him capable of anything like it. _But he must have been, that June, before everything terrible and irrevocable happened to him. It's just that I never saw it. Not until now._ Her heart sank all the way into her shoes.

"Companion!" he said joyfully, turning towards her fully.

"Uh… hi, Draco," she said.

"It's been ever so long. At least two days."

"I didn't know that you'd have any idea of time passing," she said cautiously.

He shrugged. "I didn't either, but it must've started after I saw you for the first time." He smiled at her again, more tenderly this time. "I've missed you."

_Oh, fuck!_

"I've got something to tell you. It's so exciting."

Ginny bit her lip. She said nothing for a few moments; she simply couldn't, and his smile faltered and became more guarded. Something entered his face, and she saw a bit more of the Draco he would later become.

"It's not as if there's anyone to talk to unless you count the other portraits," he said rather stiffly. "That's all I meant. But I can still keep myself quite busy. I don't want you to think—"

He was no good at hiding his feelings, she thought almost sadly. "I've missed you, too," she said. "I've just been… busy."

"Ah." Draco let all his breath out in a rush. "I'm _so_ glad to see you."

She nodded, wishing that she could look anywhere but at his happy eyes.

"Can I touch you?" he murmured. "Or, you know, as close as we can come to it?"

"Of course," said Ginny, because he seemed to simply assume that she would say yes. There must be a way that prospective companions were supposed to behave with the portraits of the boys they would soon initiate, she thought. She just didn't know what it was. _I'll have to follow Draco's lead. I don't see what else I can do!_

He put his hand on the glass, palm out, and beckoned her forward. She did too, matching hers to his.

"Your hand could almost fit into mine," he said, looking down at them both. "I just wondered. I just wanted to see. I was thinking about it during the last couple of days." He scrutinized her face. "It's so funny about that Concealing charm. All I can tell is that you're beautiful; other than that, I can't really tell what you look like. But you're very beautiful, companion."

"Um… thank you." Ginny's palm tingled and throbbed with heat where the portrait-Draco had so nearly touched it, and she was sure that all of her thoughts were printed on her face in the language of lust.

"You _are_ glad to see me, right?" Draco asked.

"Of course I am," said Ginny. Shame stabbed her. She was; she wasn't; oh, gods, she didn't know anymore, and she couldn't really understand it. She would have thought that she'd be very happy to find this portrait; at least it was a way of seeing Draco, even though it was a sixteen-year-old version of him. But now that she _did_ see him this way, she knew that she really sort of wished that she didn't. This Draco was still so _innocent_. Something had hardened him in the years between sixteen and nearly twenty-one, had turned him into the Draco she knew, but he wasn't that Draco yet. He wasn't the one who was the object of her obsession. She avoided his anxious young eyes.

"You don't look very glad," he said sadly.

"I, um… I'm just tired."

"You don't look tired," said Draco. "You look sort of keyed up, I'd say. Like you want something you haven't been getting." He gave her a rather sly little smile, and she thought that he looked keyed up, too. She wondered what he had wanted to tell her.

"Mmm." His voice dropped into a lower register. "You're a bit modest, aren't you? I rather like that. I've heard about these terms, you know, even if you don't want to tell me straight out. You're not allowed to shag anyone for six months prior to the initiation." His smile became positively devilish. He leaned forward, resting his elbows against the frame of the photograph.

"Do you miss it, companion?" asked Draco. He quirked an eyebrow upward.

Ginny blushed scarlet. Gods, she hadn't expected to have to deal with _this!_

"You've gone red all over," Draco said delightedly. "I wonder if that blush extends to the places I can't see?"

The time had definitely come to take the situation in hand. "Whether it has or not," she said, struggling to sound as stern as possible- _perhaps thinking of it as channeling Professor McGonagall would help_?-"I don't care the least little bit for your tone of voice, young man. I'll thank you to remember that what's been scheduled can just as easily be _cancelled._"

Draco went very white. "You can't mean it."

"I do mean it," said Ginny.

"Please, I'll do anything—"

"I suppose you could begin with some serious begging, Mr. Malfoy." _I really do have an inner McGonagall. Who would've thought?_

"Please, please, I'm ever so sorry," said Draco in an agonized voice. "I'll never be disrespectful again if you don't want me to. I'll do anything you want, companion. Your wish will be my command. Only _please_ don't do anything to stop the initiation ceremony from going on as planned!"

"Well…" Ginny waited for a moment, savoring her power. "All right. I won't."

Draco gave a tremendous sigh of relief. "I'll be ever so obedient from this moment on," he said, sounding genuinely penitent.

"Really?"

"Really. Although I'd think that that might get a bit boring for you, eventually." The ghost of a smile curved up his lips, and her heart melted with guilt all over again.

"It might," said Ginny guardedly.

"Although I could wear a slaveboy outfit if you like, sometime during our month together," Draco said thoughtfully. "That might be rather fun to try."

Ginny almost choked.

He came even closer to her. "I like laughing with you," he said, and he ran his hand over the glass. Ginny put her hand up again. The setting sun from the window glowed over them, and his almost-touch seemed to leave little trails of fire on her skin.

"I wish I could really touch you," he said.

"So do I," Ginny said before thinking, although she knew that she couldn't have stopped herself from saying it anyway.

The pupils of Draco's eyes expanded suddenly, taking up all the grey. He leaned even closer. "I want you to come to me," he said softly.

Her breath caught. "Draco, I… I _can't._"

"I know." He glanced swiftly from side to side, as if afraid of being overheard. "But listen to me, companion; listen. Here's what I wanted to tell you; this is what I've found out. I've had loads of time over the last few days. I don't really have anything else to do, you know. I can go to the Malfoy library; that's allowed. And I've researched spells." He was speaking very quickly now, as if afraid that she would stop him. "I found the way. I found the Succubus spell." He looked at her expectantly.

She tried to think. His fingertips were still millimeters from being pressed against hers, and it wasn't easy. He clearly seemed to think that she'd know exactly what he was talking about. "What?" she asked, aware that she sounded rather stupid.

Draco looked surprised. "You know what I mean, don't you? That's what would work, but _I_ don't know what it is. I'd always heard that companions at the Crystal Palace knew it. It's supposed to be in _Nature's Nobility: The Extended Edition._ Don't you have that? I thought it was given to all companions before the initiation."

"Um—yeah, right, but I didn't read through the entire thing yet," Ginny improvised wildly. "And I really don't th—" She stopped. "Hold on a sec, all right?" She ran back to the table, shuffled through the books, and found it. There was the glossary… _Submissive… Succulent … Sumptuous… I've gone too far, or maybe it just isn't there… Oh! Succubus!_ She flipped back to _Appendix X: A Natural History of the Crystal Palace, a Refined Establishment of Pleasure for the Amusement of Purebloods._

"Page six hundred and sixty-six," she read aloud. "Here it is. _The Succubus Spell. Portraits of the prospective sixteen-year-old initiates may suffer severe frustration during the sometimes lengthy waiting period before first sexual contact is permitted between companions and the actual boys in question, at which time the photographed figures will undergo a corresponding experience . The Succubus Spell allows the initiate to enjoy a measure of relief in a dream in the meantime. However-_ Uh… what was that noise?"

"Nothing, nothing," Draco said hurriedly.

"It _was_ something. I heard you moan," said Ginny. "Draco, if I ask you a question, I expect a truthful answer. If you want everything to proceed as planned, that is." _This could work like a permanent in vino veritas spell,_ she thought. _Except that his sixteen-year-old self doesn't know how to really weasel out of telling the truth yet!_

"Right. Of course. Complete truthfulness, coming right up," he exclaimed. "I was just thinking about, uh, enjoying the measure of relief."

Ginny didn't even try to hide her smile.

"So." Draco cleared his throat. "What's the spell?"

"'How To Summon A Succubus In 4 Easy Steps.'," Ginny read. "'Step Number One: The initiate-portrait must put himself into a receptive state of mind to facilitate the visit of the companion in the form of a succubus. Step Number Two: The companion must picture the current location of the actual boy in question.' Hm. I wonder why?" she added. "Anyway. Step Number Three: The companion must recite the actual words of the spell, which run as follows: _Kamrat ligga med varandra dröm._ Step Number Four:-'"

_Oh, shite._

"What? What is it?" asked Draco.

Ginny cleared her throat. "'Step Number Four: The companion visits the actual boy in the present day in a dream and provides release for him. She is also free to enjoy it herself.

She stopped. _Oh gods._ In a flash, she understood what this meant. His sixteen-year-old portrait thought this meant that she would visit his sixteen-year-old self, but she knew that he was wrong as surely as she had ever known anything. She would go to the real Draco on Vendetta Island, the Draco who could not possibly have forgotten her, the Draco who might be on his miserable honeymoon with Astoria, but whose every thought had to be of her.

"Is that all there is?" asked the Draco in the picture.

"Uh… no," said Ginny. "No, there's more. 'The portrait does not do so directly. For this reason, this spell is not often used, as portraits are rarely willing to provide their flesh-and-blood counterparts with pleasure that they themselves may not experience.'"

"Oh," said Draco in a very small voice. "That won't work, will it?"

Her heart plummeted. _He won't do it._ She leaned against the side of the frame, her eyes closed. "Don't cry," she heard his frantic voice saying, and it was only then that she realized that her body was shaking with sobs. She felt his hand reach out to her.

"Don't touch me," she said in a thick voice. "I can't stand it. Don't!"

"You've got to stop crying," said Draco. "Listen to me! Companion, you've absolutely got to stop it right now. I don't want to see you like this. You're making me feel terrible. Stop. Fuck, why won't you stop?" He began to sound frantic.

"I,I,I can't," Ginny hiccupped.

"But why? Can't you just tell me why? Is it…" His beautiful face was twisted with worry, she saw.

"That spell," she moaned. "I could've done it, I could've seen him, could've touched him, been with him, and now I never can!"

"Him?" Draco stopped. "You mean… you mean me?"

Ginny nodded. She was crying too hard to speak. The sixteen-year-old Draco was just as selfish as the one she knew, and he would never sacrifice his own pleasure to help anyone else, even if the someone else was his own real self. Her one hope had been snatched away from her. He was starting to talk again. _I wish you'd just shut up,_ she thought.

"I'll do it," she thought she heard him say.

"What?" she asked dully.

"I said that I'll do it. I'll cast my half of the Succubus spell," said Draco.

Ginny looked at him incredulously. "Did I hear you correctly? Draco Malfoy, offering to do something unselfish?"

He smiled crookedly. "Not quite. You're supposed to feel pleasure this way too, remember? Well, just keep in mind that it was all because of me. Think of how well disposed you'll be towards my real self when the time comes. And I have a feeling that no matter what that book says, I'll get something out of this, somehow. We Dracos have to stick together, after all. Besides…" He reached out and almost stroked her cheek. "I don't like to see you cry."

Ginny looked down for a moment, trying to collect herself. _I'm using him, and I know it. But I can't help myself, and I don't even want to do anything else._

His hands reached out, flattened against the glass, struggled to touch her. "I can't believe that I won't know when it happens. When my real self has you for the first time. I'll _have_ to be there, somehow, in some way. Just like tonight, when you visit my real self at the manor. Don't you think?"

"Yes," said Ginny, hating herself for what she was doing. This Draco _wouldn't_ know. If she actually was visiting his real sixteen-year-old self, then maybe he would. She was tricking him, using him, and oh, but how eager and trusting he was!

"How long is it until the initiation?" he asked.

"Not long," said Ginny. "I can't tell you exactly. It's not allowed."

"I've got to ask you something," said Draco. "Maybe it's not allowed either. I don't know. But I've got to ask. Do… do you _want_ to do it?"

She swallowed hard. "Yes," she said, not knowing, anymore, what was truth and what was fiction.

Draco took a quick indrawn breath of longing. "You do. I can tell that you really do, that you're telling the truth. You… it's not just a job for you. Do you want _me_? Even though I'm only sixteen years old, and I've never done it before, and I'll be rubbish at it?"

"Yes," she said, thinking of what it would be like to be with this painfully innocent Draco in the way he wanted so much, to be his first even as he was hers. Her voice was turning gravelly. "That part doesn't matter."

"I can't wait," he said.

"Neither can I."

"You know what I'm going to do tonight, right?" Draco almost stroked the surface of her breasts, very gently. "All right; if I'm going to tell the truth, it's the same thing I do every night now. I'm going to touch myself and think of you. Only you."

_This is wrong,_ thought Ginny. _Oh, it's so very wrong._

"Draco, can you tell me something?" she blurted. "Is the real one like you? The real sixteen-year-old Draco, I mean? The, uh, the one I'll visit tonight?"

He gave her a strange little smile. "Yes, he's exactly like me. More or less."

Ginny's brows drew together. "Really?"

"Really. Have you ever met the real one?"

"A few times," she said guardedly.

His hand moved up to almost-stroke her cheek. "We both have secrets we don't show," he said quietly. "Now say the spell, companion."

Ginny closed her eyes. Even through her awful guilt, she wondered what secrets this Draco might be keeping. But she couldn't wonder long, because excitement was blooming in her body like a dark, poisonous flower, need and desire and obsession all mixed up. She knew that she could no longer stop herself from taking what she craved so desperately, now that there was a way to get it.

_Kamrat ligga med varandra dröm._

The room around her wavered and disappeared; she felt herself lightening and lifting. She moved through an endless night sky, soaring over an expanse of water. An island loomed up before her, and the scent of eucalyptus was in her nostrils. She flew through a high window as effortlessly as a bird, towards a four-poster bed hung with white draperies. Closer, closer, and closer she came, and finally she saw a figure lying underneath a white coverlet, the full moon turning his hair and skin and body all the same shade of silver.

_Draco._

On Vendetta Island.

And thank all the gods, Astoria isn't with him!


	31. Ginny's Temptation

A/N: Oops… sorry about this…. The wrong chapter got posted. I'm correcting it now. Thanks to all readers and reviewers. And don't forget to check out my new blog! There's a link to a great D/G video on the first post. www dot talesofpublictransit dot com.

Ginny took deep breaths, slowly feeling warm night air filling her lungs as her body settled down to the bed and she sat on the edge.

_This is a bad idea,_ she thought. _A bad idea for so many reasons. I don't even know exactly how the Succubus spell works. Did I somehow actually travel to Vendetta Island- wherever it even is, exactly—and I'm not even in my studio anymore? Or is this just an illusion?_ She _felt_ solid. She pinched her arm, experimentally. _Ow. I think I'm really here._

Draco was certainly here. He was only a few inches away from her now.

_This is just not a good idea,_ she thought, leaning closer.

Ginny watched him shift slightly, the moonlight shimmering off his hair. She could hear him breathing evenly in his sleep. She held her hand just over the curve of his shoulder and felt the warmth of his skin under his silk undershirt. His eyelashes fluttered, and she froze. But then he went back to the steady breathing, and she relaxed again. Wait… did she smell _chocolate_? She leaned closer still and sniffed. Where _was_ it? How could Draco be holding it in his mouth? _Is it under the pillow? Maybe the house-elves left a chocolate mint here, the way they do in Muggle hotels…_ She moved in and in towards his body, closer and closer, still trying to sniff out the elusive chocolate, and a hand clamped down on her wrist. She yelped.

He sat up suddenly, and she pulled back; he grabbed her other arm; she struggled against him and got tangled up in the covers, kicking; one of her feet connected _somewhere_ and he swore something she couldn't quite hear and the next thing she knew, she was flat on the bed with him on top of her.

"Get off!" spluttered Ginny.

He pressed himself closer to her, his eyes filled with total incredulity.

"_Off!_ I'll kick you again!"

"The fuck you will. Once was enough! Next time, you'll hit something _vital_." Draco scrambled off her hastily and swung himself to one side. "Weasley, what the fuck are you _doing_ here?" His voice seemed to hold nothing but distasteful surprise.

"Uh…"

"How did you even get in? This island is Shielded."

"Um…"

"And why would you even think of coming?"

"A friendly visit?"

"A friendly visit," Draco repeated. "Did it ever occur to you that most people prefer to be let alone on their honeymoon?"

Ginny bent her head. She had never felt so stupid in her entire life. "Mm," was all she could manage.

There was a long moment of a silence. It was awfully dark in that room, which, thought Ginny, was probably a very good thing. She wondered if she could swim all the way to Corsica. _I couldn't swim ten yards,_ she thought drearily. On the other hand, drowning seemed preferable to ever looking Draco Malfoy in the face again.

He bent over to the bedside table and picked up a bottle of something. "Care for some Pinot Noir, Weasley?"

She blinked. "What?"

"This room isn't nearly large enough to have an echo… oh, never mind. Here." He gave her a glass, and she sipped at the wine.

"I'm sorry," she said lamely.

"It's a bit late for that now." He gave a short, sharp laugh. "When I said 'most people', I didn't mean me."

"Oh." Ginny sipped at her wine. The silence dragged on and on.

"You haven't answered my question," Draco's voice said from the darkness. "How did you get here, Weasley? Unless you're some sort of dream, or illusion—" He reached out without any warning and laid his palm on her chest, firmly. She gasped. Her skin throbbed and itched where he had touched it.

"No, you're real, and you're definitely here," he said. "So how did you do it?"

There was no point in avoiding the truth. "A spell."

"Ah. What sort of spell?"

_Oh, gods!_ Ginny had a sudden urge to jump out the window and take a boat to the nearest Muggle convent rather than answering Draco's question. This hadn't turned out the way she'd expected at all.

He tapped his finger against his glass of wine. "Don't tell me, then. Let me guess. I think it must have been a Dark spell in order for you to get through the wards." She hung her head, and heard his chuckle of laughter. "Who'd have thought you knew any of those, Weasley? But what sort of Dark spell, and why did you cast it? Hmm. Did you just want to find out what I was up to, I wonder?"

Draco turned to the bedside table again and pulled out his wand from a drawer in one graceful motion, pointing it at Ginny before she even had a chance to respond. He ran it up and down her arms, leaving blue sparks behind. "No," he said thoughtfully. "No trace of an Information spell."

"Why would I use one of those?"

"Well, you might be trying to learn something or other for Potter, I suppose—"

"Malfoy, if you accuse me of doing anything to help Harry, ever again," said Ginny, fire in her eyes, "I'm breaking that wine bottle over your head."

"My, but you're getting rather worked up," said Draco. "What else? You might want revenge against Astoria. That would make at least a bit of sense."

Ginny shook her head, thinking of what Daphne had said a few hours before. "She's not worth getting into trouble over."

"I quite agree. Still, I'd like to make sure that you're protected against the possibility of your own impetuous actions, so…" Draco ran the wand down her arms again, and orange sparks followed his movements. He shook his head. "That's not it either. How odd. Why don't you just tell me, Weasley?"

She shook her head, feeling completely unable to speak. Waves of shame were rolling over now, the worst embarrassment she'd ever felt, the knowledge that she'd made a complete fool of herself, oh, gods, what a _fool_ she was—

Draco put a hand on her wrist. "I'm perfectly capable of keeping you a captive in my bed until you do," he said lightly.

His touch was like fire. She bit her lip until she tasted blood in her mouth. _And I still want him, every bit as much as I did when I cast that spell to come here._

He looked down at her, frowning. "Why are you wearing a dressing-gown? Haven't you done laundry?"

"No," she mumbled.

"It still seems rather strange attire for overseas travel." He kept his hand on her, kept looking at her, until Ginny wished desperately that he would just leave her be. His eyes narrowed. His wand came down on her arm again, and this time, it left a trail of scarlet. Before he even spoke a word, Ginny knew that he'd figured out just why she was here.

"Fuck," he whispered. He let go her wrist, savagely, almost pushing her away. "Why did you have to come here, Weasley?"

There was no answer to make, but there were certainly new heights of shame to be reached—or rather, new lows, thought Ginny.

"Listen to me," said Draco. He was breathing so heavily that he sounded as if he'd been running all the way around the island, thought Ginny. "I don't want—I _can't_- look, I'm married to Astoria now. I'm trying to forget that any of this ever happened, all right?"

The words were like a hand clenched around her throat. "So am I!" snapped Ginny.

"I'm moving on. I've got to move on."

"So do I, Malfoy."

"So what are you _doing_ here, then? Why did you use the Succubus spell to turn up in my bed during my honeymoon?" demanded Draco. "Can you tell me that?"

"Because—uh, well, because…" Ginny's voice trailed off. She was _not_ going to tell him about the bargain she'd made with his own sixteen-year-old self in the portrait, that innocent, unknowing self. _I won't drag him into this!_

"_Some_ of us have a bit of self-control, you know. I could just have easily cast an Incubus spell and shown up in your bloody art studio!" Draco said through clenched teeth. "I could use a bit of how's your father; I'm certainly not getting any from Astoria."

"You're—you're not shagging Astoria?"

"No. I'm not."

"But why not? Doesn't she want to?"

He laughed humorlessly. "Oh, she wants to, all right. But I don't want to. I don't want her."

"Then why did you marry her?" asked Ginny. As soon as she saw Draco's face, she decided that she really, really needed to work on being less impulsive. Casting the Succubus spell and coming to that island was one good example of a reason why; asking that question was another.

"Damn it, I told you. I had to. I didn't have any choice. But I don't have to tell you why. And I'm not going to." Draco got up from the bed and began to pace restlessly. "No. No… I won't tell you…" He was wearing nothing but a pair of very short boxers besides the undershirt, she saw. _He looks like a panther,_ she thought. _Something predatory, a bit frightening…_ And suddenly, Ginny did feel a bit frightened.

Then suddenly, he stopped in front of her, standing so closely that her face was almost pressed against his taut stomach muscles. He smiled down at her. It didn't look like a particularly nice smile. "But now that you're here, Ginny," he said, "I see no reason why I shouldn't take advantage of the situation."

_Oh, shite._

He leaned forward so that each of his hands was on either side of her, trapping her between his arms on the bed. "You see, you've brought me something that I want very much. Succubus by special delivery, you might say. Very good of you, Weasley. Very convenient for me. A man normally expects a great deal of shagging on his honeymoon. I generally prefer more than normal as it is, and I'm having to go entirely without it now." He had been pushing her forward the entire time he was talking, and now he could keep her against the bedstead with only one hand.

"Do you remember that Pureblood Bond of Engagement I told you about? The tiresome one that immediately informed Astoria of the identity of anyone else I shagged while we were engaged?"

Ginny nodded, as hypnotized by his eyes as a bird held in the gaze of a snake.

"It certainly holds now that we're married, of course. But there are exceptions, you see. Have you guessed by now what one of the exceptions is to this bond?"

"A succubus," whispered Ginny.

"Very good," said Draco. "And the other half of the Succubus spell is a man's response. Didn't know that, did you? Well, Weasley, you've stirred mine up very successfully. I've had a bit of you already, remember? And I want more; I want all the rest of you. What man wouldn't? Especially when you present yourself to me…" He leaned in closer, and his lips touched her ear. "In a way that reminds me of the last time we were in such a similar position…"

In another few moments, it would be too late, she would be helpless to resist him, and it would be her own damn fault for casting that spell, she knew. It was what she had thought she wanted, but it wasn't what she had really wanted at all, and she suddenly knew it. He was aroused but angry; he certainly wanted her body, but he didn't want or need anything more from her. She responded to him, but half of her still wanted to run out of that bedroom as fast as she could.

"I can't do this," she panted. "It's wrong. All wrong." Then she wrenched herself away from him.

Draco's entire body tensed incredibly, but he let her go. He looked absolutely furious, and she trembled inwardly. _Not that I'm going to let him see it!_ "What the fuck is this?" he demanded. "Playing coy?"

_More like a bit of sanity, Malfoy._ "I just can't do it," she blurted. "I can't have sex with you. Yes, I know, I'm under a Succubus spell; but I can't do it this way either."

"What the fuck did you think a succubus was _for_, Weasley? Didn't you read the job description first? Did you think you'd just show up with a deck of cards and we'd play a nice, sedate game of Snap all night long?"

She looked away from him. "I didn't think," she whispered.

"That's obvious." Draco ran a hand through his hair. "Weasley, couldn't you have thought of any of this before you cast that spell?"

"I suppose I should have," admitted Ginny.

"Yes. That's a safe statement to make. Anyway, it's a bit late now."

A frisson of fear rippled up Ginny's spine. He couldn't mean… but he'd let her go as soon as she said she wanted him to stop, hadn't he? Surely he wasn't going to—"Malfoy, I'm sorry, but I just can't go through with this. I can't have sex without love, and I don't love you."

"Yes, well, I qualify for half of the equation, at least," he said coldly, not looking at her. "I can't say that sex without earthshattering love is a particular problem for me, but love seems to be rather in short supply just now. I don't love you, Weasley. But… you disturb me." And—" A curious look came over his face. "I want some time and space, just now, to not be disturbed. I've never had it before. I'm not at all sure what might happen if I do have it, or what I might become, perhaps. So I want it, that's all."

Ginny looked at the perfectly self-possessed Draco Malfoy, and wondered how it was possible that his thoughts might have anything in common with hers. A strange thought came to her. Could he really have the same fear of not knowing anything about who he really was if he ever found himself in a silent place with no-one else around, nobody at all except the still, small voice in his own head? She cleared her throat.

"Maybe I should just go," said Ginny. It took all the courage she had to say it.

"You can't," said Draco, looking incredibly weary. "What do you think I meant when I said it was too late now? I wasn't just being a bastard. Once you've decided to come to me as a succubus, you have to do what a succubus does. You don't have any choice. You didn't know that, did you?"

"No," said Ginny, suddenly feeling very cold. "Malfoy, what are you talking about?"

"I knew it. I told you—the Succubus spell is a Dark one. Where did you learn it, by the way? You didn't say." His look turned sharp.

"You don't think a Weasley could know any dark spells?" she countered.

He smiled faintly. "I did think that. I suppose I was wrong."

"Malfoy. Can you just tell me… please, I just have to know…" She swallowed hard. "Does this mean we have to actually have sex?" Her breath caught. Her heart pounded. She did want to, she didn't, she did, she didn't, with each heartbeat, her desire changed. But below and beneath it all, she still knew. She didn't love him, and he didn't love her.

Draco looked at her very directly. "What if I said yes?"

Ginny's heart skipped a beat. _Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuckity fuck…_

_So to speak. It would certainly be a way to break the no-sex curse, _a dark, smooth voice in her head slyly told her. _Just think, Ginny. You could experience sex with Draco Malfoy at last. You could find out exactly what it's like. And the best part of all is that it wouldn't be your fault. Because of this spell, you don't have any choice. _

"What if I said no?" he asked.

_Oh._ Ginny tried to pretend that she felt relieved. Then she felt truly disgusted with herself. _I thought you said that you didn't want sex without love!_ her brain and heart snarled at her in unison.

"Which one is it?" she asked Draco rather waspishly.

"I don't know," he said. "I really don't know enough about the Succubus spell. It means we have to do _something_, I know that much. Maybe nothing more than the sort of thing we've done already anyway."

"You mean, uh, in the cottage?" Ginny hoped that she wasn't starting to blush, although she was afraid that she was.

He nodded. "I would touch you, and… ah, and you would touch me."

"I would—"

"Yes. The spell requires you to touch me…" Draco paused discreetly. "In the way you saw me touch myself."

"I'd have to bring you off in my hands?"

"You do have a way of putting things delicately, Weasley." Draco smiled faintly.

"You wouldn't let me do it two nights ago. You said it was too dangerous."

"I'd have to let you now." He looked strange, she thought. But then, this entire situation could hardly be any stranger than it was. "Tell me, Weasley, have you ever touched anyone in that way? A man, or a boy?"

"No."

"Good," he said. His voice had suddenly switched into the dark, flat register she remembered. He didn't seem to have noticed, but it made her shiver.

"Why, uh—why do you think that it's good?"

He smiled, but it did not quite reach his eyes. "Weasley, weren't you listening to me a bit earlier?" He reached out and touched the side of her face, winding a curl of her hair around his finger. "I do enjoy corrupting your innocence."

Ginny gulped. "What else?"

"I'm really not sure, but I do know that you would come into my dreams. I can't say exactly what those dreams would be. I'd dream about shagging you, I suppose. But if you're really determined not to have sex with me, I suspect your real self wouldn't be participating, at least not at first. Most likely, you'd watch. As far as what our real selves are doing back on the bed, you'd touch me, and I'd touch you."

She closed her eyes briefly, the images scalding her mind. _I'll have to watch. _

"Do you like that idea?" she heard him ask.

"Yes," she said. What was the point of pretending now? "But how will the entire thing end?"

"I really have no idea," said Draco.

"Would it be with us… you know…" Ginny caught herself. She'd almost said _making love._ She knew that no matter what happened, it wouldn't be that. _Oh, what's wrong with me?_ "Actually having to have sex? I mean, the real us, not just our dream selves?"

"I don't know what will happen as far as the spell's concerned," said Draco. "But that's still not what you want, right?"

"I just can't do it."

Draco was turned away from her, so that she could only see his profile in the moonlight. "Then I won't allow it to happen. I swore to protect you from anything that might harm you, remember? And I will. Even from myself."

_That's kind of strange,_ she thought. _He didn't say he'd protect you from the spell, but that he'd protect me from himself._

But then he turned to her and smiled, and the sight of Draco Malfoy in the moonlight was enough to make her forget everything else. "Time for a little more corruption, Weasley," he murmured, drawing her further down onto the bed. She followed him, feeling her heart beat so hard that she was sure he must be able to hear it.

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

"Maybe a little," she admitted.

"Leave it you to be the first nervous succubus in wizarding history." Draco poured more wine into her glass. "Of course, you're probably the first inexperienced succubus as well. It's just not a career that attracts many virgins. Drink up, Weasley."

She did, hoping that it would calm her nerves at least a bit.

"Do you trust me?" he asked.

"Yes," said Ginny after a moment's thought. "I mean, I trust that you won't force me to have sex, or anything like that. But I'm not sure I trust that you're telling me the truth about that spell."

"Oh?" His voice sounded rather guarded, she thought.

Ginny looked down into her wine glass. "I do know a bit about Dark magic," she said. "If the spell requires us… to…well, you know… then there may not be anything that either one of us can do about it. "

She thought that he seemed to relax a bit. "Well, Weasley," he said lightly, "some girls have been known to express the opinion that sex with me is far from the worst fate that can befall them. In fact, one or two have gone so far as to suggest it's rather nice—"

She hit him with a pillow.

"Ouch. You have a wicked backhand." He placed a hand over hers. "Look, Weasley, if it actually came to that—which it won't—it's true that the Pureblood Bond of Engagement wouldn't be broken, so at least you'd avoid trouble from that quarter. And really, you can't tell me that you haven't at least wondered what it would be like, with me. Yes?"

Ginny nodded, unable to quite meet his eye. "So…it would be…."

His hand caressed hers. "Perfect. More perfect than you can imagine."

"You almost make me wish that I could say yes," she said. "But I can't."

"I know," said Draco, straightening up. "So I won't let it come to that. Now finish your wine, all right? And then we'll get to fulfilling the terms of this spell."

"All right," said Ginny. He was smiling pleasantly at her and sipping from his own glass, his beautiful face a perfect mask. Suddenly, she remembered the face of the sixteen-year-old Draco in the portrait, so open, so defenseless against the world. So different from the Draco she saw now, who was seemingly in total control of himself once more. _But is he?_ she wondered. _Is he really?_ One way or another, she knew that she was about to find out.


	32. Ginny's Seduction

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially Victoria. This chapter has been edited for the requirements of this archive (actually, the last one was too.) The Extremely Naughty version is over at www dot dracoandginny dot com. (Kind of annoying how it has to be spelled out like that, but there's no way around it here…) Also, I had to correct the slight problem of accidentally mixing up this chapter and the last one. Chapter 31 got posted as Chapter 30, so I went back and posted the actual Chapter 30. So go back and read that. This is now in the place it was supposed to be. It's complicated… just go back and read the last chapter, and it'll all make sense! ;)

Also, my new blog is now up! My homepage is the link. Check it out and let me know what you think.

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Ginny put down her wine glass. It seemed to make a very loud noise, she thought. She cleared her throat. "So what do we have to do first?"

Draco had propped himself up against the headboard. He watched her from behind half-lidded eyes. _Like a snake,_ she thought. _No—a dragon. A beautiful, sinister dragon._ "What do you mean, we? _You're_ the succubus, Weasley."

She flushed. "Well, it's not as if I know what I'm doing!"

"I know. I'll tell you what to do," he said rather smugly.

"I suppose you like doing that in bed."

"Sometimes, yes." That was all Draco said, but Ginny could have sworn that she saw his eyes glow silver as the words came out. She half expected him to start breathing flame.

"So what do I do?" she asked.

"Undress yourself," he said. "That's what you do first."

"Uh… really?"

"Yes, really. Are we back to the what-did-you-think-the-job-description-of-a-succubus-was stage? And you're supposed to do it provocatively, by the way. You can manage that, right?"

Ginny's mouth was going dry. "Look, I'll do my best. It's not as if I've really ever done this before for anyone—" She heard his swift intake of breath.

"What is it?" she asked, although she had a feeling that she knew.

There was a pause. "Do it slowly," said Draco.

Ginny was fairly sure that she wasn't going to have any choice about that. Her hands were trembling so badly that she could hardly even raise them to her waist. She untied the robe and let it fall open slightly.

"Now let it fall off your shoulders," said his disembodied voice from the shadows. "Not too fast."

She shrugged the material off , one shoulder at a time. Her heart thumped. _Lub-dup. Lub-dup. Lub-dup. _

"Pull it all the way down."

She pulled the robe down to her lap, and it puddled around her hips. Her chest was completely bare, and she felt the warm night air on her breasts. _Does he want me to move forward so he can touch me?_ she wondered. She started to move on her knees, awkwardly.

"Stay where you are," said Draco.

"Oh. All right," said Ginny.

"Pull the robe down all the way, and get rid of it. Throw it on the floor or something."

She did, clumsily, all too aware that she was wearing only her knickers now. _At least those are nice. Black silk._ Draco didn't speak for what seemed like a very long time, and she wondered if she'd done something he didn't like.

"Now take those things off," he said.

Ginny reached down to remove the last scrap of clothing she wore, feeling shaky and horribly nervous. _Malfoy's seen me like this once before already,_ she told herself over and over again. _I shouldn't be so scared. I shouldn't feel so… oh, but I do. What was I thinking when I cast this spell?_ The last time, he'd undressed _her_; she hadn't done it for him, and anyway she'd been half-mad and desperate and nothing had seemed quite real, somehow. This felt all too real.

Finally, she was completely naked in bed in front of him. She shifted position and felt the slippery silk sheets on her skin; he'd pulled back the coverlet. "Malfoy, don't you want me to come over there?"

"No," he said.

"Don't you…" She hesitated. "Didn't you like the way I undressed for you? Did I do anything wrong?"

"_No_,Weasley."

"Then, why—" She had been approaching him as she talked, and she was close enough to touch him now; she reached out a hand to touch him, and he jerked away from her almost violently. She felt her eyes fill with tears as quickly as if he had slapped her. _Stupid, stupid._ She grabbed the coverlet and wrapped it around herself. He pulled it down with a rough hand.

"You don't know what your little striptease was doing to me," said Draco. "So I can see that I'll have to be blunt. I haven't had sex with anyone in a long time, Weasley, because of that Pureblood Vow with Astoria."

"I heard that you made up for it beforehand," she said tartly.

"You can't make up for things beforehand! It's been months and months and _months_, and now I've been forced to watch you undress in front of me. I didn't even get a proper look at you before, and now I have, and I know I won't be able to do anything but touch you. It's like a particularly exquisite form of torture."

Ginny's tongue suddenly felt very thick in her mouth. "Well, uh… Malfoy, you'll get _something_ out of all this."

"That's true," he said, an odd tone in his voice.

"And I'll do the best job I can. But you already know I haven't done it before. I can't say that I really know _how_ to do it," she admitted.

"I have an idea," said Draco. "How about if you put that robe on again? You can take it off right before we go into the dream."

"All right," said Ginny, feeling around for the robe. "But why?"

"Because I ought to give you a preliminary wanking-off lesson," Draco said .

"I suppose otherwise I wouldn't do it right, and I might not be able to get you off."

"I'm not worried about that. What I'm worried about is that you'll do it too fast. No—" He fended her off as he reached for him. "Listen to me before you simply start grabbing. You're not going to practice directly on me. If you touch me now, this is going to be over before we start. And it can't end until we get into the dream; I don't know what will happen if it does. That's what I was trying to tell you."

"I do enjoy learning new things," Ginny said primly.

"Well, you're certainly going to practice a new skill right now. _No_, Weasley!" He removed her hand from the edge of his boxers, where she was trying to pull them down. "I can't undress until the point when the dream begins. "

"You mean that I'm not even going to get a really good look at you?"

"Sorry, but that's not how the Succubus spell works. If I'd come to you as an incubus, then I could strip naked for you and prance about all you liked."

She sat back on her heels, feeling a bit disappointed. "I would have liked a look, Malfoy. I didn't get a good one last time either."

"Something tells me that you'll eventually get a very good one, Weasley," Draco said softly. "Robe's on? Tied nice and tight? All right, then." He lay back and gestured for her to sit next to him.

"You do remember what you saw me do two nights ago, correct? When I…" He made a subtle motion with one hand, and she nodded. "Then that's a start, at least. But I wasn't concerned with making it last, so you'll need a slightly different technique."

Ginny nodded anxiously, wondering how _that_ was going to work when she wasn't at all sure what the regular technique was. _Oh, I wish I'd stolen that book from under Hermione's bed during fifth year. It had moving illustrations, I'm sure of it._

"I suppose we ought to cover the basic mechanics first," Draco said thoughtfully. "I do wish we had a banana for you to practice on. Imagine that the moment's come. Clothes off, the dream's just begun, and we're watching our corresponding selves starting to do the dirty deed. At the same time, I've started touching you, you're somehow managing to control yourself enough to reach for me—you'll have to work on that, by the way—and I'm standing at the ready. You'll start by getting a hold on my equipment at the base, but _not_ too hard, please."

"I suppose I wouldn't want to hurt you," said Ginny.

"I don't think you'd do that, Weasley. I've told you—I'm more concerned about this experience ending immediately, and under the terms of this spell, I don't think that would be a good thing."

Ginny frowned. "It almost sounds like maybe I should just uh, take care of business once first rather quickly. And then I could go more slowly the second time. Unless you can't do it twice in a row."

"I certainly can," snapped Draco. "Easily. That's not the problem."

"Oh," said Ginny. She imagined Draco doing it twice in a row, easily.

"Still, when you touch me, don't be afraid to use some pressure. I can take more than what you'd prefer for yourself," said Draco.

"Oh, I see. Like this?"

"Wait." He looked alarmed. "Weasley, I didn't mean _now_—"

It was too late. Ginny had already made her first attempt. Draco made a very strange sound in response. _Oh dear. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I hurt him. Maybe-_ Her eyes grew wide. _Something_ seemed to be starting up, and rather quickly, too.

"How did that happen so fast?"she asked.

"I can't help it- that's just how it is for men—and get your hand off me!" he said in a strangled voice.

"Well, how else am I supposed to learn the best way to do this?"

"You're going to have come up with some other way than touching me like that, because you can't do it yet!" Draco took a deep breath. "Let's try pantomime. Put your fingers in the air. Make a circle out of them." Draco examined Ginny's hand critically. "That'll never work. Use your other hand as well."

Her mouth went dry. "Uh—"

"Otherwise, you'll get too tired to keep it up more than a few seconds. I don't think the fingers on one of your hands will even reach all the way around me," he said almost absently. Then he grinned devilishly at the expression on Ginny's face. "You've seen me, remember?"

"Um—it was awfully dark in that room—"

He held up his hand, pressing it against hers. "I manage it with one hand, of course. But mine are much larger than yours."

She remembered matching hands with the sixteen-year-old portrait-Draco only an hour before, and tears prickled at the inside of her eyelashes.

"What is it?"

"Nothing. It's nothing. Trying to imagine how on earth that would ever fit me, I suppose. Quite hypothetically, I mean." She smiled nervously.

"Oh, we could make it fit. But I know your feelings about that. Anyway, then you're going to grasp me in your palms. Give a light squeeze. Very light, particularly after that. Your hands are rather strong from all that sculpture you do, you know. Then just sort of start… stroking. You might go up or down. You might alternate hands. If you like, you could use your mouth a bit. No… no, you'd better not."

"What about, um, lubrication?" asked Ginny.

Draco made a tsk-tsk noise with his tongue. "Oh, Weasley, did I get to you too late? How would an utter innocent gain awareness of issues such as 'lubrication'?"

"Um…"

"You are one, aren't you?" He leaned up on his elbows.

"Of course I am. You know I am, unless I've had sex in the past two days, and I can tell you, I haven't jumped into bed with Dean Thomas or Colin Creevey." Ginny decided not to say anything about Blaise Zabini.

"Dean Thomas!" Draco's brows drew together. "What's he been doing sniffing around you?"

"Shut it, Malfoy," said Ginny. "The reason I know about it is because I grew up with six brothers, and I was a very snoopy sister with a firm belief in going through everyone's dresser drawers."

Oh." Draco smiled lightly. He turned to the bedside table and came back with a small bottle labeled _Dr. Salacey's Self-Pleasuring Potion—Easing the Way for Solitary Wizards' Satisfaction Since 1699!_. "As it happens, I do have some."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Trust you to bring it along on your honeymoon." She regretted the words as soon as she'd said them, but his smile did not waver.

"I knew I'd need it," he said. "Not exactly what a man always _dreams_ of at this special, tender, supposedly-shagging-filled time, true, but sometimes a wizard just has to make do. And those Climax charms are always so bloody awful. Hands are the thing."

Ginny blushed. "Okay. What else, Malfoy?"

Draco shrugged. "There's not much that's tricky about getting a bloke off, really. The problem is delaying it once you've started, so you've just got to be as careful as you can. Don't go too fast, and don't squeeze too hard. If I put my hand on yours, it's a signal to slack off. If I start jerking my hips up, _stop_, because it means I'm about to come. It may be too late to do anything about it, but at least you can try."

How could he possibly be so _casual_ about it, she wondered. "But, uh, you do want to come eventually. Don't you?"

"Yes. I'll come when the dream-Draco does, and you'll do the same thing, matching the dream-Ginny. But it'll be infinitely easier for me to control what happens to you." Something happened to his smile then, and she couldn't have said what it was, but it sent heat pulsing through her body. She imagined the exquisite torture of waiting, of being kept hanging on the edge until the moment of that other Ginny's orgasm, and then the moment when Draco allowed her exquisite release. She shivered.

"You'll enjoy yours very, very much," he said. "You'll go first, for one thing. Waiting for mine will be more like the tortures of the damned, I think."

"I hate to think of you suffering like that," she said honestly. She placed her hand over his, and she felt him trembling slightly. _How strange. I wonder why._

"It'll all be worth it." Draco moved back slightly, so that he was entirely in the shadows. He moved his fingers so that they were intertwined with hers. She didn't know what to say, and apparently, she thought, neither did he, so they sat in silence.

"Are we set to go, then?" she finally asked.

"I think so," said Draco. "Don't touch me yet, not until we're in the dream. And let me start touching you first. I doubt I'll be able to talk to you as long as we're in the dream, although I imagine that my dream self will be able to talk to your dream self. I wonder if he can talk to you? I've never read anything about that one way or the other. Well, we'll find out, I suppose. Now take your robe off again."

She did, and laid it on the bed. "Your turn." He stayed motionless. "Malfoy, come on," she said impatiently. "You told me that you're required to get undressed as well, just before we go into the dream."

"Yes, I did, didn't I?" He pulled his undershirt over his head, and she feasted her eyes on the play of his muscles over his slender chest and abdomen.

"The boxers, Malfoy."

"Right, right." He hooked his thumbs in the waistband and pulled those down too.

He was almost entirely in the shadows, Ginny noticed with some irritation. But she could still see that he was standing half at attention. He was looking up at the ceiling.

"Look, can I touch you now, just once?" she asked. "So that I know it's _you_ reacting to me, not just… I don't know… the dream? I mean, you've seen how I react to you, but I haven't seen what happens when I touch you. Because you wouldn't let me."

"All right," he said. "Just once, or this will come to an end very quickly."

"I would've thought you'd have more control than that. You're supposed to be the callous playboy type with all the discarded girlfriends."

"Normally I do have more control. But not now. Not with you." He shut his mouth tightly. "Just do it once, Ginny."

She knelt over Draco and reached down. She ran the tips of her fingers up. _Oh. My. Gods…_ No, she really hadn't known what she was getting herself into with this spell. His hands reached up, and for a second she was sure he was going to push her away. But he cupped her breasts instead, looking up at her. Through the pleasure, an immense, unexpected wave of emotion rolled through her. It carried disconnected thoughts, and impossible bits of wishes. If this were real. If this were _their_ honeymoon. If there were no Succubus spell, no marriage to Astoria, no secrets, no dreams, and they were going on to make love fully, just the two of them, with no darkness between them at all. Suddenly, fiercely, irrationally, Ginny wished that all of it was true.

The hands pushed her back. "That's all I can take," said Draco. He looked very pale. "Keep kneeling over me like that, and lay your hand on my forehead." His hair was damp with sweat, and she smoothed it back. "Now close your eyes," he whispered, and she fell into dream with him.

She was looking out over a small green meadow ringed by trees. A light breeze carried the salt smell of the sea. As she watched, Draco came into view, carrying a picnic basket. She walked on his other side, holding his hand. It was strange to see herself from an outside perspective, but even stranger to see Draco, she thought. He was younger than the present day, but she was at a distance and she couldn't seem to get closer, so she couldn't tell how young he was. Ginny herself, on the other hand, looked at least nineteen years old. _What is this?_ she wondered. _Is it the memory of an actual dream that Draco had in the past? No, that can't be it, because I look exactly the same as I do now. Is it a dream that he'd be having anyway right now? Malfoy, what is it?_ But she couldn't make her voice heard; her thoughts stayed in her head, and after a few attempts, she gave up, deciding that Draco had been right. She really couldn't talk to him in the dream, which meant that he wouldn't be able to talk to her either.

The dream-Draco and Ginny sat in the grass on a blanket, and he reached out and played with a braid of her hair. She smiled at him. He smiled back with a tenderness that seemed to send a stab of pain through Ginny's entire body. Then he leaned forward, towards the dream-Ginny, and they shared a number of long, slow, endless kisses. Ginny was watching the sunlight shimmer off their mingled red and silvery hair in a sort of trance when she felt two hands move up and around her breasts. She jumped in surprise, and then remembered. _Malfoy said that he'd touch me first. But he can't talk to me, so he couldn't tell me that he was going to do it… does this mean that I'm supposed to touch him? I suppose it does. How am I even going to find him, though? I can't see him; I can only see the dream-Draco._

In the field, the two pulled apart slightly. The dream-Draco was slipping the dream-Ginny's blouse off her shoulders, and then her white lace bra. Ginny watched him cup her own breasts, watched her dream self shiver and put her arms round him as he suckled at her nipples. Then she herself moaned when she felt the real Draco do the same to her own breasts, slowly, lingeringly. She fumbled round and put her hands on his lean chest, copying the dream-Ginny.

The dream-Draco pushed the dream-Ginny back onto the blanket, the lush green grass surrounding them. He had taken all her clothes off now, and she was as nude as Ginny herself. His hands were all over her. The dream-Ginny arched her back and cried out. Ginny felt a hand moving between her legs, and she gasped; the real Draco was matching his dream self. Both Dracos knew where to touch, and both Ginnys were ready now.

The dream-Ginny opened herself to receive him, and he shifted his weight fully on top of her. Then... Ginny's vision blurred. Had she really just seen that? Yes.

That was when the real Draco's hands became forceful and demanding on her body, the gentleness gone, and a shattering pleasure seized her, sending shock waves all the way to her toes. Her own dream-self cried out under the dream-Draco.

In the meadow, the dream-Draco clung onto the dream-Ginny as he sobbed out his pleasure, shuddering against her. Then he was still. They lay together, hands clasped, and looked at each other. The scene was blurred somehow, misty and not-quite-distinct, but Ginny saw what was in their eyes.

_I wish I could see him, and he could see me,_ she thought. _I wish I could hear him. I wish he could talk to me._ She was no longer completely sure which Draco she meant.

The dream-Ginny began weaving a chain of daisies. Ginny reached out to the side and felt along Draco's arm. He wrapped it around her waist and pulled her close. She put her head on his shoulder.

"What now?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," said Draco. "I can hear your voice again, though."

Ginny turned to look at him. The meadow was still quite clear, but the bedroom in the tower on Vendetta Island was, too. So was the real Draco.

"I can see you," he said. He reached out and laid a hand on her bare chest, pinching her nipples. He looked at her with silvery eyes, and she had the strange feeling, again, of being a bird held in the gaze of a snake.

"Weasley," he said. "You saw what it could be like. Sex with me. You _know,_ now, or you have some idea at least, of how extraordinary the pleasure would be. Don't you?"

"Yes," whispered Ginny.

"But you could do nothing except watch. That was horribly frustrating, wasn't it?"

She nodded.

" I gave you all the pleasure I could, but that wasn't enough, was it?"

"No." That was true. Her body still ached horribly.

"You want what your dream-self had."

"Yes," said Ginny. She remembered watching the photograph-Ginny and Draco in the Daily Prophet three days before, going off in his car. She'd envied them so much. She'd craved what the photographed Ginny was about to get from him so desperately that she thought she was going to come to pieces.

"The Succubus spell still holds," said Draco. "You'd be safe." He moved closer, still staring directly into her eyes. There was a very intricate crystalline silvery structure in the irises, Ginny saw now. She had to be very, very close in order to see it. "Weasley, you could have it now." He paused. "You can have _me_ now. Everything I can offer you. All the pleasure I can give you. Right here, in this bed, right now."

His eyes held her, but she could look past them, too. That must be part of the spell, she thought. She could still see the meadow.

The dream-Ginny had finished weaving her chain of daisies. She reached up and put in on the dream-Draco's head. He was gorgeous, Ginny thought objectively. Like some young God of the forest. Pan, maybe.

"It's still real," he said. "I won't let it be the end. Not even if all the magic in the world works against me. I won't let it win, I won't, I won't. You're mine, and I won't let go of you."

"Why are you still watching that dream?" the real Draco asked uneasily.

"I need to know how it ends," said Ginny.

"The end doesn't matter now. We know everything we need to know. Weasley, listen to me—"

"Be quiet, Malfoy," she said flatly, and he was.

"Say something," the dream-Draco told the dream-Ginny. "You've got to say something to me. You've got to tell me if you'll hold onto me, too. If you will, then there's nothing that can stop me. But if you won't…" His beautiful face began to tremble under the crown of daisies, which should have looked completely silly, but didn't.

The dream-Ginny leaned forward. She laid her hand against the side of his face. She put one arm around him, and she held onto him tightly. "I won't let go, Draco," she whispered. "I'll never let you fall."

"Then I'll hold to you forever," he said. "You're mine, mine, mine, always. Always. My Marie."

The dream faded to black and winked out.

Ginny jumped off the bed.

"That was only a dream!" exclaimed Draco. "It didn't mean a thing. It didn't—"

"Shut it, Malfoy," she said, putting her robe back on.

"I don't even know what it _meant_. People dream all sorts of odd—"

"Shut _up_!" She gave the tie at the waist a vicious yank.

"You know, Uncle Ziggy once told me that all dreams are about sex anyway. It's all sublimation. You shouldn't pay attention to anything else. He's the Malfoy Manor ghost librarian, you know—" Draco put his hand on Ginny's shoulder and tried to turn her round. She whirled on him, eyes blazing.

"You loved her!"

"I, ah… I don't know what you mean."

"You know what I mean, all right," Ginny said bitterly. "That wasn't an ordinary dream, Malfoy. That sort of shite wouldn't even fool a Muggle. It was a vision of truth, a piece of the past. Your past, with Marie. You were telling her that you'd hold to her, that you wouldn't let something or other be the end, and then she was telling you that she wouldn't let you go either, and—"

"It was years ago," Draco said stiffly. "It doesn't matter now. Nothing matters now."

"You're right about that. I don't give a fuck about any shite you try to tell me now, because it's too late! I've already heard enough from you," snarled Ginny. "You loved her—_you loved Marie_- don't lie to me, at least don't lie about that!"

He didn't lie, thought Ginny. He didn't say anything. He just looked at her.

"And then you stuck _me_ into a memory of her," she said. "Malfoy, you're a complete bastard."

He didn't say anything to that, either.

"This entire thing," she said with an air of finality, "is all your—"

Then she stopped. She knew how she had been about to end that sentence. _All your fault._ All Draco Malfoy's fault. And it was true, it _was_… wasn't it?

He just looked back at her, silently.

"No," said Ginny, as if to herself. "I can't blame it all on you, can I? Not this time." She gave a short, humorless laugh. "I'm the one who was fool enough to cast that Succubus spell. I'm the one who came here." She looked at the beautiful young man who stood motionless on the other side of the bed from her. "Goodbye, Draco Malfoy."

And she felt herself lifting, lightening again, and soaring away from the room, the tower, and from Vendetta Island. _Huh. I wonder if that's all that a Succubus ever had to do, to break this spell?_

She didn't see Draco reach out to her, just a moment too late. "Ginny," he said, very quietly. Then his hand dropped, and he sat on the edge of the bed, staring into empty space.

The first thing she heard was Draco Malfoy's voice. _Oh, fuck, not this again,_ she thought. But even as her art studio came back into focus around her, she knew exactly which Draco this was. The frame was propped up on the table. The eager, excited sixteen-year-old face peered at her, painfully innocent, horribly hopeful.

"What happened?" he asked. "Did it work? It did, didn't it? What was it like? I was good, wasn't I? Right?"

"It was good," Ginny said wearily.

"I should've known I'd have astounding natural talents in that direction." He smirked at her, but his big grey eyes were soft and happy. "I'm so glad." He propped his chin up on his hands. "I just wish that I could've actually… well… been there. My real self enjoyed it, right? Of course I did—the other me, I mean. Tell me how much."

"Loads," she said, wishing that he would just shut up.

His smooth brow furrowed. "Whatever's wrong?"

Ginny fell into a chair, unable to stay on her feet another moment. "I… we weren't able to do everything we both wanted to do. That's all. We could only touch each other."

"Oh. But you knew that was likely all it could be, didn't you?"

"I knew. But it still wasn't enough."

"I'm sorry," Draco said softly. He reached out his hand and almost-touched her head where she had sunk it into her hands. "Don't cry, companion. Please don't. I can't bear seeing it; really I can't."

Ginny found that she could not bear seeing his anxious young face. "Go to sleep now, all right?" she asked.

"I will if you like," he said. "But you'll come back, won't you?"

She nodded. She couldn't speak while he was looking at her like that. _I've taken advantage of an innocent boy- well, as innocent as Draco Malfoy ever was—and it was wrong,_ she thought. _And I can't do anything like that again._

"_Promise_ me," he said.

"I promise," said Ginny, and she turned the portrait to the wall. There was a mirror lying face down on the table next to it. She picked it up and propped it on edge, staring into it, studying her face.

She'd just fled from Draco Malfoy on Vendetta Island, but in the morning, she could always return. Maybe he could be hers. Or maybe not; her desire for him might be as impossible to actually fulfill as any hope of having the dream-Draco she'd seen in the meadow, or the sixteen-year-old Draco in the birthday portrait she'd just turned to the wall. But either way, she could hold onto Draco Malfoy, or she could let him go. The difference this time was that she had gone to him; even without a clear idea of how a Succubus spell really worked or what she was really getting herself into, she had chosen to turn up in his bed. _Oh, I knew what would happen, all right,_ she thought. _I won't pretend anymore._

Ginny stared into the mirror, and she saw her own weakness, and the depths of her fears. She saw the frightened child-self still trapped in the chamber, and the stubborn courage, and the determination to win through at all costs. She saw the thin invisible steel that lay at the very core of her. And at last, she understood how utterly the choice lay in her own hands. She began to cry. Tears dripped from her eyes onto the surface of the table for a long time.

Then she straightened up, wondering if someone actually had crushed her heart between their hands and drained it dry. It certainly felt like it.

_I still want Draco Malfoy,_ thought Ginny. _No matter what. I don't feel like I could ever stop wanting him, not now. But I can live without him, and I have to._

"I look like death," she mumbled to her face in the mirror. It was like a sad echo of this morning, when everything had seemed so much more hopeful and she'd jumped out of bed with so much energy, so much excitement about facing the day. _If I knew what it was going to be like, I never would've got out of bed at all!_ And yet…

Ginny traced the outlines of her face curiously in the mirror. And yet, she realized, she really didn't feel exactly hopeless now. It certainly seemed as if she should. So why didn't she? There was even a bit of the same feeling from the morning. Was it an echo? _No. It's richer. Deeper, stronger…_ It felt… real. It felt as if she'd earned it, now.

"I think I'm starting to understand," she said aloud. It was easy to make resolutions before they had really been tested in any way. Now, they had, and even in her weakness, she had come through.

Ginny took out paper and pencil from a drawer in the table, adjusted the mirror, and began to draw. She squinted at herself objectively, knowing that she'd probably never looked worse. Her eyes were red, her hair looked as if she'd been caught in a hurricane, her face was horribly swollen from crying, and her nose seemed to have been stung repeatedly by an entire swarm of bees. She drew it all.

By the end, her hand was cramping painfully, and her legs were stiff from sitting too long in one position. The cuckoo clock had given up and was sleeping with its mouth open and its tongue hanging out. _That's it. I'm getting a new one tomorrow,_ she decided. She held back the drawing, looked at it critically, and smiled. At the bottom, she wrote _The Evolution of Ginny Weasley._

_Although I'm still not completely sure what evolution even is,_ she thought. _Or how I could possibly turn this into a bunch of models for sculptures, which Zenobia Smith may be expecting me to deliver, oh, yesterday. But I'll worry about all of that tomorrow!_

Then she yawned hugely and went to bed in the other room, grimly determined to have at least one night's sleep that did not include a single dream about Draco Malfoy. She dropped off as quickly and thoroughly as if she had been hit over the head by a Sledgehammer hex, and slept for ten hours straight without any dreams at all.


	33. Ginny Learns A Few Things

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially Victoria. I love this chapter!

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)

Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny—and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do)."  
— Steven Jay Gould (1941-2002)

+++

_Scritch. Scratch._

"Mmm." Ginny burrowed further under the covers. Sunlight was stabbing through her closed eyelids. That was decidedly not a good thing.

_Tap tap TAP!_

She wrapped a pillow around her head. Several more hours of sleep sounded like a marvelous idea. Possibly several more _days_ would be preferable.

_BONK!_

"Blergh! All right, all right, I'm coming..." _Oh, that's right. I already did, last night. Of course, that may have to do me for a while._ Ginny sat up, rubbing her eyes. She staggered out of bed, holding onto the walls for balance, and stopped. Something was battering on the door. _I don't have a good feeling about this,_ she thought. Of course, she didn't have a good feeling, full stop, largely because nifflers seemed to have taken up residence in her stomach and were busily digging away at the inside of it. She peered through the spyhole, and her worst fears were immediately confirmed.

An owl was banging at the front door, a large parchment in its claws. It hooted expectantly and waved at her. Something about it looked familiar, although she was in no shape to work out what it was. She groaned and closed the spyhole. The situation was clearly getting worse by the hour, because Molly Weasley had now figured out a way to get owls into a Shielded building. At some point in the near future, she would be forced to face the agonizing ordeal of writing back to her mother, but at the moment, she rather thought that she'd prefer to eat the entire broken Victory statue, piece by piece. _Although maybe with some butter, it wouldn't be so bad…_ Her stomach rumbled loudly.

At least once her hair had been washed, thought Ginny, every single strand no longer stood on end. She stepped out of the shower, toweling herself dry. The clothes from the night before were the only clean ones she had in the entire flat, and she grimaced as she put them on. She glanced sideways at the framed photograph on the table. The sixteen-year-old Draco in the portrait was sleeping peacefully. Cautiously, she picked it up. He stretched, yawned, and grinned.

_Oh, shite._

"Good morning, companion," he said, pressing himself up against the frame. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes," said Ginny, hating herself for what she was about to do.

Draco grinned. "Hope so, because I have an idea for _modifying_ the Succubus spell."

"Oh?" Ginny started to walk into the bedroom.

"Mm-hm." The grin turned proprietary. Ginny saw something creep into it that she thought she recognized from the older Draco's face, more than a little bit of the look of the possessive male. The sixteen-year-old Draco knew now, that she'd given something to him, and that he'd made it possible for his real self to get it. He was right, of course; he just didn't know which real self it was. _But his eyes are still so innocent,_ she thought painfully. _Draco Malfoy, what happened to you in those five years to change you so completely?_

"I think there's a way to change it so that you'd actually be with _me_," he said.

"Really?" Ginny picked up her wand on one side, where she knew that he couldn't see her do it.

"Oh, yes. You could come to me in the portrait. We could be together, companion, for a little while at least," said Draco. "Wouldn't you like that?"

_More than anything in the world,_ thought Ginny. At that moment, at least, it was no more than the simple truth. She looked at him steadily, this beautiful, anxious, innocent young Draco, and she realized that that she wanted him too much, just as she wanted the Draco that this teenager would become more than it was good for her to want anyone or anything. She didn't understand what had happened in the years that had stretched between them to turn one into the other, but she knew that even if she found out the very worst about Draco Malfoy's past, the weak, aching part of her would still want him. Whatever had happened. Whatever he had done.

"We can't do it," said Ginny. Then before she lost her nerve, she tapped the portrait with her wand, muttered a Shrinking spell, wrapped it in the jumper, and shoved it into the very back of the bedroom closet.

_I'm a coward. I'm such a complete and total coward, and the ghost of Godric Gryffindor is probably headed over here to haunt me right this minute,_ she thought drearily as she stared out the window. At least it was much too warm to actually _need_ Draco's jumper, she decided. _It's a beautiful spring day._ Not that going outside would be a terribly good idea, seeing as how it would undoubtedly lead to being attacked by a flock of crazed owls.

_And I'll have to stay here anyway,_ thought Ginny. _I have to do those evolution models. Chaining myself to the table and slaving away for about twelve hours a day from now on is really the only hope of getting it done._

She drummed her fingers on the table, sighing. She had never felt less inspired in her entire life. Her mind and heart and soul had been stomped on, squeezed out, hung up, and left to dry. There was not one iota of artistic creativity left in any of them; every bit of psychic energy was going towards trying to forget the one person she knew that she could not afford to remember. And on top of it all, she didn't know the first thing about the promised theme of the artwork. She cudgeled her brains and came up with a very faint memory of a monkey diorama at a Muggle science museum where Arthur Weasley had dragged them all when she was about five years old.

Her fingers touched paper. She looked down at one of the books from the crate. _Sense and Sensibility and the Structure of Evolutionary Theory._ A tiny thread of hope stirred. If she could at least skim a few sentences and get a simple explanation, then she might be able to get going on the sculpture models. Ginny knew she could find a wormhole through the most painful inner world once she started serious work on a piece of art. She could fly past all the agony that Draco Malfoy had caused her, and soar into all the places of beauty and light within herself. _If I can only find it,_ she thought longingly. _Oh, why did I say I'd do this on a subject I don't know anything about? Well… how hard can it be to understand, really? _There had been a sort of line of monkey models at the museum, each one walking more and more upright until they reached a smiling man strutting about, if she remembered correctly. That seemed simple enough. Feeling cautiously confident, she opened the book at random.

_Relative to the conventional view of life's history as an at least broadly predictable process of gradually advancing complexity through time, three features of the paleontological record stand out in opposition and shall therefore serve as organizing themes for the rest of this article: the constancy of modal complexity throughout life's history; the concentration of major events in short bursts interspersed with long periods of relative stability; and the role of external impositions, primarily mass extinctions, in disrupting patterns of "normal" times. These three features, combined with more general features of chaos and contingency, require a new framework for conceptualizing and drawing life's history, and this article therefore closes with suggestions for a different iconography of evolution-_

A dawning feeling of horror swept over her. She had always thought that she was rather intelligent, or at least a few notches above the intellectual capacity of, say, Crabbe and Goyle on a bad day. She peeked ahead a few pages only to find _Challenges to Neo-Darwinism and Their Meaning for a Revised View of Human Consciousness._ Ginny decided that she was wrong. She was actually a low-grade moron and always had been.

"Oh, fuck," she moaned, slamming the book shut not quite fast enough to avoid seeing that _most of our current cognitive life uses the nonadaptive sequelae of a large brain as exaptations_.

Her stomach growled again, louder this time.

"I'm starving," Ginny said aloud. "Even unspeakably thick people can still starve to death, can't they? I suppose I'll have to forget all about an artistic career and go into something that involves a limited number of brain cells, such as training security trolls, or exotic dancing in goblin pubs, but even so, I'll have to eat. I'll bet there isn't _any_ food here. There might be a box of baking soda in the back of the fridge. No—Luna took it home to make those horrible beef stew cookies last week." _Argh! Maybe I could try chewing coffee grounds…_

She sniffed the air. Perhaps one sign of sudden brain cell loss was olfactory hallucinations. _Huh. I remembered a four-syllable word. I can't possibly be as dumb as I feel. Something smells awfully good. Kind of like fried pancakes…_

One of the other books had fallen open, and Ginny read the title. _An Extremely Educational Sciencey-Type Book by a Famous Scientist who Explains Science to You, Whoever You May Be._ A cheerful, rotund man with a mustache waved at her happily from the author photograph back cover. He was munching on something.

"Uh… what's that?" she asked.

"Potato knish. You'd like maybe a bite?" he called out to her.

_That_ was what she'd smelled. "I really, really wish I could," she said.

"It might cheer you up."

"I don't think so."

"A pretzel?"

"No. I just don't think it would work out very well—"

"An Italian ice?"

"No, really—"

"A cheeseburger?"

"I'm sure you mean well, but _no._ Eating ghost food can lead to really awful indigestion, Mr… Dr…uh… science-y type person."

"Oh, you can call me Steve," the author said chattily.

"Right." Ginny glanced at the byline on the book. _Stephen Jay Gould._ "Look, I don't think anything is going to make me feel any better. I've decided that I'm officially the dumbest person the world has ever seen."

"Of course you're not. Don't be silly." Gould tapped on his chin with his forefinger, still munching away at a knish. "Here's something that should cheer you right up. The temporary and accidental dominance of homo sapiens on this planet is entirely predicated on the destruction of dinosaurs by a comet slamming into Earth sixty-five million years ago. If not for this catastrophic event, mammals would still be the size of rats, at best. And homo sapiens never would have evolved at all." He looked sadly at the knish. "Something tells me that knishes never would have been invented."

"That's supposed to be cheerful?" Ginny asked, appalled. "That's the most depressing thing I've ever heard!"

"You have a point," said Gould, beginning to slurp a chocolate shake. "It's almost as depressing as the Cambrian extinction. Such a tragic event! Ninety-five percent of all life forms on the planet failed to survive it. You're sure you don't want a knish? You should eat. You look so thin." He made a clucking noise of disapproval, sounding remarkably like Molly Weasley. "How about some Dr. Brown's cream soda?"

"I think I'm getting the worst headache of my entire life," said Ginny.

"Perhaps I should just draw some nice pictures of dinosaurs," he said.

Ginny sunk her head in her hands. "That's it. I don't understand evolution at all."

"Ah," said Gould, tapping his forefinger against his chin. "You tried to read my other book, didn't you?"

"You wrote _that_ thing?" Ginny poked gingerly at the evolution book, half expecting it to bite. "Sweet Loki. It has 11,784.78 pages."

"Penned by yours truly," said Gould, with what might have been less than a full complement of modesty, in Ginny's opinion.

"Could you summarize it in three sentences for the benefit of a stupid person?" Ginny asked rather pitifully.

"Don't sell yourself short," said Gould. "99.9999999% of the population doesn't understand my theories either."

"I'll bet Hermione does," muttered Ginny. "That book is probably her idea of light bedtime reading."

"Don't be so sure. She started _Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms_ a few years back and never got past the first chapter."

"Wait a minute," said Ginny. "How do you know who Hermione Granger is?"

"Well, I was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard," he said evasively. "As well as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, winner of the Darwin-Wallace Medal, author of over twenty popular books, and a guest star on an episode of _The Simpsons._ I do know a few things, Ginny."

"I'm not even going to ask how you know _my_ name," she sighed.

"Good. The point is, I there's something I desperately need to tell you about Lucius and Draco Malfoy."

Ginny gasped. She looked down at her hands. The knuckles were white where she'd been clenching them. "I don't want to hear anything at all about anybody by the name of Malfoy," she said through gritted teeth.

"But—"

"I'll close this book. I mean it. All I want is a simple explanation of how evolution works, and the title says you can explain it all. But not one word-" She could hear her own voice getting louder and louder. "Not one single word about a Malfoy!"  
"I say,' said a curious, refined, rather tinny-sounding voice, "are we speaking in regards to _the_ Wiltshire Malfoys?"

"The next person to say that name," she snarled, "is going to _die!_"

"My, that does sound rather disagreeable." The voice chuckled. "In my case, however, I'm afraid that it's a bit late. Over one hundred years late, to be precise."

Ginny whipped her head round. A man with incredible mutton-chop whiskers in a very stiff Victorian collar and a watch-chain across his waistcoat smiled pleasantly up at her from the frontispiece of the book, which had fallen open to its title page. She groaned. She distinctly remembered swearing in front of him yesterday. "Who are _you?_" she snapped, remembering too late that she always did have an unfortunate tendency to follow up past rudeness with an even greater degree of future rudeness, out of sheer embarrassment.

He gave a little bow. "Charles Darwin, very much at your service, my dear Miss Weasley. And I have a reason—a very urgent reason, for speaking to you regarding the Malfoys, despite your unmistakable aversion to the subject—"

"Aversion isn't the _word_. All I want is a simple explanation of evolution so I can do these sculpture models, and then—"

"Charles Darwin?" Stephen Jay Gould rushed over to the very edge of the photo frame. "My idol! My avatar! The master! My own personal version of God, being a lifelong atheist—although I may have to rethink that one, seeing as how I did end up in an afterlife of sorts."

"You're altogether too kind, my dear fellow," Darwin said modestly. "I am addressing the esteemed Stephen Jay Gould, I may presume?"

"Guilty as charged. Would you like a bacon double cheeseburger? I never kept kosher, you know, and I'm very attached to them."

"That would be most agreeable. And I believe we should join forces in this other matter. Perhaps between the two of us, we may successfully persuade Miss Weasley of the vital importance of listening to the information we must impart regarding the Malfoys. If you'd care to join me in my most agreeable portrait setting, Dr. Gould…"

"Oh, call me Steve. How about some fries?" The author busily packed a large cooler of food.

"And my friends generally addressed me as 'Chaz' in life. Perhaps if you could include some of those curious yellow cakes labeled 'Twinkies'; they do appear to be quite delectable." The two scientists immediately popped up in the picture frame in the frontispiece of _Origin of Species_ and started busily laying out a checked tablecloth.

"What _is_ this?" demanded Ginny. "Why do the two of you get to have an afterlife picnic?"

"Well, dear lady," said Darwin with some dignity, "my last meal was in 1882, just before my death." He bit into a Twinkie. "Creamy filling. How odd. Are you quite sure that you prefer not to try one?"

Her stomach growled painfully. Maybe three weeks of indigestion really _would_ be worth getting to eat a ghost knish or two. _Wait a minute! What are they whispering about now?_

"Gene theory wasn't really my thing—I was a paleontologist, primarily- but I can tell you, the Malfoys were pretty amazingly inbred," Gould was saying to Darwin. "I'm surprised they didn't all start having three-headed kids. The last thing Lucius needed to do was to start up that project of his—"

Ginny groaned. "Absolutely, positively, no rabbiting on about any of the Malfoys, or I will burn that book! Got it?"

"My dear lady," Darwin said with immense dignity, "if I had a shilling for every time _Origin of Species_ was burned, I should now be a millionaire many times over."

She immediately felt ashamed. _Wonderful. Great scientists throughout the ages now think I'm a raving bitch, on top of everything else. How can this week get any worse?_ Later, of course, she would think that she really should have known better than to tempt fate.

A knock came at the door. It wasn't the random banging of an owl, but a genteel, careful knock.

_Oh, no. I don't have a good feeling about this at all._ But maybe, thought Ginny, things couldn't get any worse if she simply stayed in her chair and refused to get up. Yes. That was a plan, she decided. Not a good one, perhaps, but a plan.

The door opened. So did her mouth. _So much for that Shield! And it didn't work on that owl either. I should ask for my rent money back… except that Draco Malfoy's paying for it._ When she saw who had walked in, however…

Crumbleygrotts smiled at her widely. Goblins' faces, she decided, were not designed for smiles. "Miss Weasley. So glad to see you I am! Our owl, er, seems to have lost his way he has. Reach you with our message he apparently did not."

_Chizbolt! I should've known. No wonder that owl could get in here._ Crumbleygrotts hopped into a chair and sat down at the table.

"Take up too much of your valuable time I will not. This letter of credit authorized to deliver I am," The goblin bowed to her and handed her a folded parchment. Ginny stared at it. The heavy cream-laid paper was sealed with red wax, and a dragon was stamped into it. _Oh, no._ … It was all beginning to make sense. Horrible, awful sense.

"Deposited into your account at Gringott's this will be," said Crumbleygrotts. "Accounts at all Diagon Alley merchants set up it will, access to considerable credit it will provide. Er, open it you may…?"

Ginny opened it with a rather violent, slashing motion. Yes, that pretty well summed up what it said, she thought, in the most dry, legal language possible. "Don't tell me who authorized this," she said grimly. "Let me guess. Draco Malfoy."

"Ah, yes. Correct you are, yes, indeed," said the goblin.

_I really should just take this,_ the voice of reason said in Ginny's head. _The gods know that I'm entitled to anything I can get out of that bastard. But…_ She scanned the lines again. "He didn't actually _write_ this, did he?"

"No, no. A standard arrangement through Gringotts this is."

"_Standard arrangement?_

Crumbleygrotts shifted uncomfortably. "Malfoys these sorts of financial arrangements arranged they have, over many, many years. Quite common it is."

"What sort of Malfoys these arrangements set up—oh, you know what I mean. Which Malfoys did this? And who did they do it with?" _Scary, really, how easy it is to fall into that weird grammar._

"Er… male Malfoys. With, ah, ladies of their choice."

"You mean that this is Draco Malfoy's idea of a down payment for—" Ginny stopped. Charles Darwin could hear everything, after all, and she didn't to offend his Victorian-era ears by finishing the sentence with _a piece of arse_, which was the first phrase that had come to mind.

"Mr. Malfoy a personal note included," said the goblin, handing her a small folded envelope. She ripped it open.

_Weasley,_

Don't get your knickers in a twist over this. Think of it as my making up a bit for the hell I've put you through over the past few days, that's all. It doesn't put you under any obligation to me. 

She hesitated. That did sound reasonable enough, she had to admit. _And think of all the food I could buy with an unlimited line of credit at The Puffy Muffin Gourmet Bakery and Cheese Shop down the block!_ Maybe she really _should_ accept Draco's money. She read on to the next line. Was it just her imagination, or did the sharp, slanting backhand waver?

_This farce of a honeymoon will be over and done with as soon as I can manage it, and then I'll pack Astoria off somewhere or other. Remain at the studio until I can make other arrangements, Weasley, and believe me, I'll make them as quickly as possible. I'll come to you because I can't stay away. You know I can't, and if you were at all capable of resisting me, you already would have done. We've got to finish what we began. Just wait until you hear from me-_

A veil of red dropped in front of her eyes. She crumpled up the note into a tiny ball. Then she took the letter of credit, ripped it into shreds, and carefully handed them all back to Crumbleygrotts.

"I don't think I'll be needing this," she said.

"All right," said Ginny, plopping down into a chair. She looked into the portrait frame on the frontispiece of _Origin of Species._ "Whatever it is the pair of you thinks you have to tell me about Draco Malfoy, I _want_ to hear it. As long as it's absolutely dreadful. Was he torturing puppies at the time?"

"Oh no, no," said Darwin, finishing a cheeseburger. "Nothing of the sort."

"Pulling the wings off butterflies?"

"Not even close," said Gould. "Chaz, would you care for the last Coke?"

"That's quite all right, Steve. That beverage is, I fear, peculiarly reminiscent of the bilgewater that would collect in the hull of the H.M.S. _Beagle_ by the end of the longest voyages." Darwin looked solemnly at Ginny. "My dear lady, the truth is that Draco Malfoy's part in our tale is rather a tragic one."

"Oh, gods," moaned Ginny. "You mean you're going to try to make me feel _sorry_ for him?"

"Try? We're not going to _try_ to do anything," said Gould, shrugging. "We'll present empirical evidence; you'll draw your own conclusions. That's how science works."

"What do you mean?"

Darwin held out a large silvery bowl. "We've found what I have been reliably informed is known as a 'Pensieve'. Curious little object, if you ask me. Our combined memories of a certain day at Malfoy Manor nearly three years in the past are contained therein."

_Fuck! I should have known._ "I won't watch it," Ginny said flatly.

The scientists smirked at each other.

"Oh, but you will," said Gould. "You see, Ginny, we will explain neither dot nor iota about evolutionary theory-"

"Nor single jot, nor isolated tittle—" added Darwin.

"Until you find out what we saw that night at Malfoy Manor."

"Oh, no. No. There has to be some other way to learn about evolution. I know what I'll do! I'll—I'll go find someone else to ask!" Ginny improvised wildly.

"We are already aware that have chosen to stay indoors today," said Darwin. "Your mother has apparently seen fit to bombard you with a series of owls, which you prefer to avoid."

"Besides, you _have_ to take advantage of this fabulous opportunity. We're the two greatest evolutionary biologists in history," said Gould.

"Oh, really," Ginny said a bit skeptically. She had only their word for it, if it came to that.

The two scientists exchanged hurt looks.

"After all, I invented the theory of evolution by means of natural selection," said Darwin.

"And I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium," said Gould. "It's the actual mechanism of evolution."

"Such an extraordinarily clever idea," said Darwin.

"I owe it all to the master, Chaz," said Gould, making a slight bow. "The point is, Ginny, nobody's going to explain it better than we can. Who else would you get anyway ? That _schlemiel_ Richard Dawkins?"

"All right!" sighed Ginny. "All right. I know when I'm beaten. But could we please make this short?"

"It's not a long memory," said Gould. "Here's the context. Our books were only out for a very brief period of time .Lucius Malfoy bought them for use in some kind of nonsensical home study course based on his insane ideas about pureblood evolution."

_Lucius Malfoy!_ Ginny closed her eyes.

"And our association was very brief, thank the God who I used to be very sure didn't exist," Gould went on. "The scene opens shortly after we were unpacked from a box—"

Ginny interrupted before she could hear another word. "Look, I already know there was some sort of evolution class during my sixth year at Hogwarts, and the Carrows taught it. _I_ just didn't take it, and I'm hardly surprised that Lucius Malfoy would've made his son learn the same rubbish at home, and I already knew something about his insane theories about purebloods-" She broke off. Lucius Malfoy's almost- remembered voice whispered in her ear.

She realized that the silence had been going on too long. Her hands felt clammy, and she was trembling. "So why should I have to see a Pensieve memory about it?" she asked.

"I'm sorry," Gould said quietly. "But I think you should, Ginny. I really believe that you need to know every available piece of information about what Lucius and Draco Malfoy did that day."

His brown eyes were very kind, she thought. She wondered what he had really seen; she wondered how much he saw now. She knew that she had to find out. "All right," she said, hoping that she could find the strength to face whatever it was that she was about to see.

It had been a long time since she'd gone through a Pensieve, but it wasn't something that you ever forgot how to do, she thought. She slipped instantly through the silvery liquid, and then she was staring at the subtle fleur-de-lis pattern woven into very expensive wallpaper. It was the same pattern that formed the background in the formal birthday portrait of the sixteen-year-old Draco, she realized. A few books lay open on the floor where they had clearly been thrown against the wall only moments before.

"These, _these_!" said an angry voice, "are trash. I suppose that my expectations should not have been high, considering that we have no wizarding authors in the scientific tradition. But this one—" A pale hand pointed at _The Origin of Species_"—provides no proper support for the facts regarding pureblood superiority, none whatsoever. And as for that-" A long, strong finger stabbed at _Sense and Sensibility and the Structure of Evolutionary Theory_. "_That_ author is Jewish! If the dark wizard Adolf Hitler had only taken care of those people properly sixty years ago, we should not still be burdened with them now. I've always said that Grindelwald should have given him more support during that Muggle war—"

"Father, please don't start on _that _rant again," said an all-too-familiar voice from behind Ginny. "I don't care to stay cooped in here listening to you raving all afternoon long."

"You'll stay where I tell you for as long as I tell you to do so, Draco," snapped Lucius Malfoy. Ginny pulled back so that she could see him, and oh gods, there he was, sleek and impeccable and arrogant, and even looking at a memory of him sent a shiver of fear down her spine.

Draco snorted. "I don't want to take this bloody stupid class to begin with. I'm not even at Hogwarts, I'm stuck here; why should I have to follow along with some idiotic class the Carrows are teaching?"

"We've gone over this before," Lucius said quietly. "You know very well why. You know what I hope to accomplish—"

"I know what you _think_ you can accomplish," retorted Draco. "If the Dark Lord ever knew anything at all about—"

"Be silent!" hissed Lucius.

"Hmmph." Draco shot his father a filthy look, but he kept his mouth shut.

Lucius stood. "Now pick up those books, and bring them to your rooms. We might as well keep them for the purpose of future reference, I suppose. I will speak further to you on this subject at a later time."

"Do I look like a house-elf?"

"Surely, Draco, you must understand that it would be very unwise to allow any of the house-elves to know exactly what _we_ may be planning to do." Lucius laid a very light emphasis on the word.

Draco didn't move for a few seconds, and Ginny wondered if he would. But he finally nodded and picked up the books. He had a strange expression on his face as he passed her, she thought. She got a good look at him, and her heart turned over. He was a Death Eater by then; how could he still look so innocent?

The scene faded to black, and then lightened only slightly to a deep grey. Draco was lying asleep in a bed, breathing deeply and evenly, the angry, surly expression smoothed away from his face. Ginny floated around him at different angles, trying to figure out what it was about him that made him look so very different from the way he was now. It hadn't been much more than three years before. He'd already knelt in front of Voldemort and vowed to kill Dumbledore; even though he hadn't done in it in the end, shouldn't the intention have changed him somehow? He murmured something in his sleep and reached out at nothing, almost as if he felt her drifting past him, and the sleeve of his pyjama top fell away from his left arm. She saw the twisted, blackened Dark Mark disfiguring the flawless skin of his inner wrist. He'd already taken that. Voldemort was forcing him to torture his prisoners that year; he'd told her about that. Maybe Draco Malfoy had been innocent when he'd barely turned sixteen, but at seventeen and a half years of age, he had already walked a long way into darkness. So why hadn't he changed to become what he was now? Because he hadn't; Ginny was sure he hadn't. Maybe he'd started to, but there was still some softness and innocence in this Draco that had yet to harden into the impenetrable surface he wore today, and she could not understand why.

The door opened, admitting a stream of light. Draco sat up and reached for his wand in one fluid motion. He had already learned to be cautious, thought Ginny.

"Oh. It's you, Father," he said. "What the hell is it?"

"Only this." Lucius came in and sat on the edge of the bed. "As soon as I receive appropriate material for this class, Draco, I should like you to study it, and you are perfectly well aware of the reasons why."

"I'm aware, all right," muttered Draco. "I know all about—" He shut his lips tightly.

"Yes?"

"All right. Nobody can overhear us, you know. My rooms are Shielded. I made sure of that. I was going to say, I know all about your mad pureblood breeding plans!"

"Oh, I should hardly say that 'mad' is the correct word for them." Lucius Malfoy sounded almost amused.

"_Oy vey,_" muttered Gould in Ginny's ear. "I was the only one who witnessed this touching father-son scene, by the way, because _Origin of Species_ was crammed all the way at the back of the bookshelf. Probably just as well. You'll see what I mean."

"The Dark Lord will never permit you to carry out any of them," said Draco.

"Since we are currently enjoying, shall we say, a higher level of security than normal? Yes? I'm going to tell you in confidence, Draco, that what the Dark Lord doesn't know will not hurt him," said Lucius.

"You mean… Father, you really think…" Draco did not seem to be able to finish his sentence.

"I do," said Lucius. "And you certainly must remember the, ah, specific option we have discussed in the past, Draco. The Dark Lord promised you a certain reward if you accomplished the task at hand, the task was unfortunately not accomplished, et cetera. If my plans do come to fruition, that reward will be very much within your grasp."

The boy was silent for a moment. "I don't see how it would ever work."

"I find your lack of faith disturbing," said Lucius.

iI think I've heard that somewhere before/i, thought Ginny. She couldn't remember where.

Draco swallowed convulsively. "Look, Father, I don't doubt you, I just—you _can't_ think that Ginny Weasley would ever come here willingly."

The room swam in front of Ginny's eyes. A half-remembered voice hissed in her mind. _The Weasleys may be blood traitors, but still, your family's blood is pure. As are you, Ginny. As are you. Do not trouble to deny it. We know that you remain untouched, as for our purposes, you must be. Any Malfoy must know that his sons are his own, but now, at our new beginning... at the next stage of evolution for the pureblood race of wizards, you might say... it is more vital than ever._ But Lucius Malfoy had never actually said that to her. He couldn't have done. How could she be _remembering_ it?

"Oh dear," Darwin was murmuring somewhere in the background. "Oh dear. Such a blackguard. What a villain that elder Malfoy was, yes, yes indeed, worse than I thought. Oh dear me."

"Chaz is having a Victorian-era moment," said Gould in her ear. "Come on, Ginny. Stay with us. I have no idea what the physiological effects would be if you fainted in a Pensieve memory."

"You're right, Steve," said Ginny. With great effort, she forced her mind back to the scene in front of her.

"Draco, I don't know why you're choosing to become unnecessarily squeamish now, but Malfoys don't sit about waiting for others to decide whether or not they're going to cooperate with our plans," Lucius was saying coldly. "The Weasley girl will have no choice in the matter."

"Oh, really?" Draco was standing now, his hands knotted into fists. "What about _my_ choice, Father?"

"Damn it, you've always said that she _was_ your choice! You've certainly given the impression that she'd please you, and I do think that she'd at least amuse you for a time. Her bloodlines are pure, although I've never really believed that _she_ is any such thing since she's reached the age of thirteen or so."

"That's not true—" Draco's fists tightened.

"You've always maintained the strangest beliefs about that girl. She's a promiscuous little slut, Draco, but her bloodlines are unsurpassed, so we must accept these unfortunate flaws.I'll keep her quarantined for a few months before we breed her and we can be sure that the offspring are yours."

"They'd be mine, all right, because nobody else has ever touched her," said Draco. "But you don't understand, Father. Ginny Weasley won't want to be here. She won't want to even stay in the same _room_ with me—"

"Yes, yes, Draco, and she'll kick up quite a fuss, I'm sure."

"Doesn't that make any difference?"

"No, not really. It won't be pleasant to deal with her nonsense, but we'll just have to manage it," Lucius said impatiently.

"But, Father…" Draco's mouth worked. He seemed to be struggling with something that he could not express, Ginny thought. "She's a pureblood, just as we are; that's why you want her for this mad project of yours in the first place. And I think… I think she'd really rather kill herself than come here and be put in my bed. Doesn't that count for anything?

Lucius Malfoy looked at his son, and his eyes, thought Ginny, were the color of ice under a pitiless midwinter sun.

"I do occasionally have my disagreements with the Dark Lord, although I know that you will not be so foolish as to speak of them outside of this room, Draco," he said softly. "Still, he has a saying that I do appreciate very much. 'There is no good or evil. There is only power, and the will to wield it.'"

Draco looked at the floor, silently.

"I trust that you understand what I mean by this little quotation," said Lucius.

More silence.

"Then we needn't speak of it again." Lucius rose. "I'm not sure when I'll actually be able to bring the Weasley girl here, but my hopes are high that it will be relatively soon—"

"No," said Draco, cutting across his father's voice.

Lucius stared at his son. "What did I hear you say?"

"Your hearing's quite good." Draco looked up defiantly. Lucius was still a bit taller, Ginny saw. "I said, no. I don't want her at the Manor. You're not bringing her here. You're not using her this way."

"I don't think you understand, Draco. No-one else will do for this particular project."

"Then we won't have anyone, will we?" He locked eyes with Lucius. His father looked away first.

Lucius stood. "We'll discuss this later."

"No, we won't," muttered Draco. The door closed, and he rolled over onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. His father's footsteps retreated down the corridor, and a single tear rolled down Draco's cheek.

+++

A/N: This is the end of the Pensieve memory, just so that y'all know it doesn't go on and on for 576, chapters. ;)


	34. Ginny's Decision

A/N:Thanks to all the readers and reviewers, especially Victoria, and the readers who reviewed on FIA!

I did a LOT of research for this chapter in my attempt to not sound dumb while putting words in the mouths of great scientists. I used Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould's work, and also took a lot from Niles Eldredge (who worked with SJG on punctuated equilibrium theory, but he couldn't be there as a ghost author because, well, he's still alive). Also Richard Lewontin and Steven Rose (also alive and SJG's Harvard homies.)

I thought about trying to explain where the title of _Draco's Dangerous Dilemma_ came from. Obviously, Draco does have a lot of dangerous dilemmas in this fic, and he's going to have even more, but the title did have an actual inspiration based on real-life events (yes, Stephen Jay Gould was involved.) I did type out the explanation, and then realized that linking the backstory with the title of the fic makes sense to, um… me. The 6.5 billion sane people on the planet, not so much. If anyone really wants to see the demented explanation, I guess they should let me know, but they might regret it.

Something cold surrounded Ginny, pulling her away. She knew immediately what this meant. The memory was coming to an end. _Oh, no!_ She tried to cling onto one of the dark wooden bedposts, desperately wanting more time to decipher the expression on Draco Malfoy's seventeen-year-old face as he stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom after he'd just told Lucius that he didn't want her brought there, and that he wouldn't use her as part of his father's mad pureblood breeding plans. But she couldn't stay. She was being pulled back through layer after layer of silvery mist, and then she was sitting at the table in the front room of her studio, blankly staring down at a tiny scrunched-up ball of paper on the floor. It was the note that the present-day Draco had written to her and included with the Gringotts letter of credit, she remembered.

"I'm sorry," said Stephen Jay Gould from the author's photograph in the frontispiece of _The Origin of Species._ He sounded very sad, she thought. And very tired. _Allowing someone else to go through your Pensieve memories can take so much out of you,_ she thought. _Of course, he wouldn't know that._

"Ginny, I really wish it hadn't been necessary to spring everything on you so suddenly. I'm sure that it was a terrible shock, but we both held very strong opinions that you ought to know—"

"It wasn't shocking, though," said Ginny, surprising herself. "Not the first part, anyway. It's so strange, because it should've been… I think I already knew Lucius Malfoy was trying to do just that back then. Loki knows _how_ I knew, but once I saw it, I realized that I did know. But…" Her voice trailed off. _But the shock came when I found out what Draco did once he was really presented with the choice. That, I didn't know. I wouldn't have guessed. I thought… I don't know what I thought._ Whatever it was, she'd been wrong. When he was almost eighteen years old, he could have gone along with Lucius Malfoy's mad plans for her so easily, because that was the only way that he could ever get her. But instead, he had defied his father. _I never knew that. He never told me. He did what he could to keep me away, to keep me safe… then_.

But now, Draco wanted to pay her off and reserve her as his own private sex-toy. He'd sent that letter of credit and written that note, arrogantly assuming that she'd wait for him here and then submissively fall on her back with legs spread the second he deigned to show up! _Ooh-_ Her fists clenched, and then loosened again. What could possibly have happened during those three years, Ginny wondered painfully. How had one Draco changed into the other?

"That's what evolution is, Ginny," Stephen Jay Gould said quietly at her elbow. "Change over time."

She wiped her nose. She'd been crying, she realized. "Do ghost authors have the power to read minds?" she asked. _I sincerely hope not. Especially when it comes to that legs-spread part. My imagination started wandering into detail, just the least little bit._ She glanced guiltily back at Darwin, who was muttering something about _dreadfully unfortunate incident_ and _deepest regrets, sincerely_ in the background of the photo.

"Nope. You were talking to yourself. Want to be left alone for a while? Chaz, what say we mosey over to a library and check out Julia Child's _Art of French Cooking_?"

"Ah… that may be an excellent idea, Steve," said Darwin. "The lady does appear to be in some distress at the moment. Perhaps this was not the wisest idea at its outset."

"No," Ginny said suddenly. "I'm glad I know. I'm glad you both showed me."

"Ginny, our reason was a very practical one," said Gould. "You've got to have the information you need in order to protect yourself from Lucius Malfoy in any way you can."

"What do you mean? It doesn't matter now. He's been dead for ages, although I suppose that neither of you would have known that. It happened… oh…" Ginny tried to think. "Almost a year after you were shoved onto the back bookshelves, I suppose. Draco's father is gone now; he can't hurt anyone anymore." She tried very hard to believe her own words, without much success."

"Is he," said Darwin. He sounded far from convinced, which didn't help her own project, thought Ginny.

"He _is_," she insisted.

"Mm-hm," said Gould. The two exchanged glances. Ginny thought that they both looked very skeptical. Well, they were scientists; it was their job to have that kind of attitude about everything. True, she wasn't terribly familiar with the entire concept of a scientist—they were always Muggles, and never came from the strictly wizarding world- but even she knew that.

"Well. My advice is to take care, dear lady," sighed Darwin. "Take care."

"Let's move on," said Ginny. "You both said you'd explain evolution."

"Quite so," said Darwin. "Steve, you were a professor, I believe?"

"Thirty-five years at Harvard," said Gould.

"Then I readily concede to your greater expertise as educator."

"This reminds me of those volunteer opportunities where everyone else steps back two paces and leaves you standing in front," the ghost muttered. "Let's split it up. I'll go and get a blackboard from the other book. Chaz, you cover the basics until I get back, all right?"

"With pleasure." Darwin beamed at Ginny. "In 1859, my dear Miss Weasley, I developed the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Are you at all familiar with my ideas?"

"Um—no," she admitted. "They don't exactly teach science in wizarding schools, you know."

"Ah. Perhaps an illustration is in order." Darwin held out his hand, and a butterfly with gray and silver wings lit on his finger. "My theory states that those members of a species who happen to possess traits which equip them more efficiently for the struggle of life will be naturally selected, and will be more likely to survive when others die out. This makes sense, does it not?"

"I think so," said Ginny. "But what does it have to do with a butterfly?"

"Let us suppose that this agreeable insect developed the ability to range further within its habitat, in order to reach a more succulent supply of flower nectar. Other butterflies did not. This charming specimen—" Darwin raised his hand, and the butterfly flew away to nest on a large cluster of honeysuckle—"survived to pass on this talent to its offspring. The other unfortunates died away."

"That's really kind of sad," Ginny said gloomily.

Darwin shrugged. "Dear lady, evolution is neither sad nor happy, good nor evil, sanctified nor—you should excuse the word, but it is all in the service of science—damned. It simply is. But there is more to the story. My theory of natural selection has been badly misunderstood many times since it was originally published nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. 'Survival of the fittest' was my motto, you see, but survival so often does not entail anything resembling a fight to the death." He pointed to the honeysuckle bush. Two butterflies were flying round each other, circling in complicated, intricate patterns. Another joined them, and then another, and the group moved towards the largest flowers.

"They're working together," murmured Ginny, watching them.

"Exactly. But some people have quite deliberately misunderstood its meaning. In fact, my work has been used as an excuse for great atrocities, when certain human beings have been condemned as unfit to survive." For a moment, Darwin looked desperately sad. "Lucius Malfoy is such an example, although rather an unimportant one in practice since he has never had the chance to gain power."

"But how did he even find out about such a Muggle idea?" asked Ginny. She knew the only possible reply almost before she had even finished asking the question. "From Voldemort," she said. "Pureblood superiority was _his_ idea originally, and he wasn't even a pureblood himself. So where did he learn it from…" The shadow of an awful answer was beginning to take shape in her mind.

"Dear lady, do you truly wish to know?" Darwin asked softly.

"I have to," she said.

"There was a schoolboy at Hogwarts perhaps fifty years ago, and he was named Tom Riddle. He came upon a copy of my book, which was located in the Forbidden Section of the library of that school. And most unfortunately, he read my work extensively. It was far from a pleasant experience. Very far indeed." He shuddered.

"Tom Riddle," she whispered. "You mean that _he_ used your ideas about natural selection and survival of the fittest, or misused them, I mean, and he even knew them back when-" _When he possessed me for a year. When I was still a child. When he forced me to do terrible things, to come so close to destroying everyone I cared about. Oh, gods._

Darwin nodded sadly. "He never admitted such in so many words, as I understand it, for I was, of course, a Muggle, and the source would not have endeared him to his followers. He did not understand that there is no superiority in evolution's survivors, only a greater degree of fit to local environments. Inbreeds certainly show no such improved fitness."

Ginny shuddered. "Harry Potter killed him, you know. These days, I'm usually convinced that it's the only good thing Harry's ever done in his life."

"I am afraid that you do not yet understand, dear lady," said Darwin. "The unnatural thing which the schoolboy Riddle became, and who you refer to as 'Voldemort', may well be dead—and where he fits into natural taxonomy, I must say that I cannot even guess; I never dreamed of such a thing when I was alive—but his ideas live on." The ghost cleared his throat delicately. "Lucius Malfoy may have distanced himself from his erstwhile mentor long ago, as you saw in the Pensieve memory, but _his_ infatuation with those ideas remains."

"No it doesn't, because he's _dead_," Ginny said impatiently. "Lucius Malfoy died six months after the war—oh, all right, that conversation isn't going anywhere. Look, what difference would it make anyway? You just said that his theories about pureblood superiority were rubbish."

"As they are," said Darwin. "But Lucius Malfoy is—"

"_Was!_"

"Very well. Lucius Malfoy _was_ a man of extraordinary determination and cunning. And as a wizard, he belonged to your world, Miss Weasley. I was a scientist, and I see, now, that I am a scientist still. The world of magic is one that I do not pretend to understand." He gave her a long, worried look. "I do not know what he hoped to achieve with the help of this power which is so unknown to me. I cannot guess at what he would have been able to accomplish. Miss Weasley, I can only beg you again to take care."

A wave of dizziness rolled over Ginny. The room seemed to darken around her. "Miss Weasley? Miss Weasley, have you become faint?" she heard Darwin's voice anxiously asking. "Oh dear, oh dear… I wonder if smelling salts might be available… not that they would do a great deal of good if applied through a wizarding photograph, I suppose…"

"_Chaz._ What have you done to this poor girl? You told her about Voldemort, didn't you? I told you it wasn't a good idea. People should listen to me once in a while. I don't talk to hear the sound of my own voice, you know. I'm not giving advice for my health. It's a little late for that purpose anyway." Gould put down something heavy with a decisive thump.

"My dear fellow, I am a scientist, not a diplomat! I can assure you, I meant no harm. Dreadfully sorry. Perhaps a refreshing beverage? Oh dear; ghost food and drink are unacceptable, as I recall… dear me, I've put my foot in it now…"

Ginny opened her eyes to see Darwin wringing his hands and looking horribly anxious, and Gould setting up a blackboard with a stern expression on his face that once again reminded her remarkably of her mother. She sighed. "It's all right, Chaz. I really _would_ rather know the worst."

"Then it's the perfect time to learn all about the Permian-Triassic extinction," said Gould, starting to sketch stick figures on the board.

"What are those?" Ginny asked dubiously.

"Er… they represent all the ocean life, land animals and plants on the planet Earth two hundred and fifty-one million years ago. I'm a scientist, not an artist, all right?" The board filled up with small dinosaurs, odd-looking fish and snails, strange ferns, bizarre dog-like things with giant teeth, and one butterfly.

He stood back. "Picture it, Ginny. All the earth's major land masses were collected into a single supercontinent known as Pangaea. Lots of rain, a stable climate, plenty of food for everyone. Life was good. Fifty-five million years slipped by. Then, suddenly—" He smacked one fist into his opposite palm. "Bam! A comet hit the southern hemisphere one morning without any warning at all."

"What happened then?" asked Ginny.

Gould picked up the eraser and started wiping out the stick figures, one by one.

"_All_ of them? I thought you already told me about -"

"Oh, there have been at least five mass extinctions in the history of life on earth." Wipe. Wipe. Wipe.

"Oh dear," Ginny said faintly. _He's still erasing!_ Finally, only one figure remained. It was the butterfly. "Well, at least _something_ made it. But why?"

"This butterfly simply happened to have a skill that saw it through the catastrophe." He tapped the nearly empty board. "It had learned how to cooperate with all the others." A number of additional butterflies appeared and fluttered around the first, and they all formed a chain to a bush of flowers. The delicious scent of honeysuckle filled the air. Gould looked startled. "I've never had _that_ happen before."

"Wizarding drawings will do that," said Ginny.

"Oh. The point is, even the most successful natural selection in the world doesn't lead to meaningful effects until catastrophe strikes. Then the period of tremendous stability is interrupted by a rapid burst of evolutionary change. Chaos creates opportunity. That's punctuated evolution in a nutshell."

"It just seems awfully depressing," said Ginny.

"I've never seen it that way," said Gould. "It's a system that should be viewed as morally liberating, not cosmically depressing. The answers to moral questions cannot be found in nature's factuality in any case, so why not take the 'cold bath' of recognizing nature as nonmoral, and not constructed to match our hopes?"(1) A shower of icy water burst from the blackboard, and he stepped back with a look of alarm. "I didn't mean that literally."

"You do have to watch out for that sort of thing, now that you've entered the wizarding world," said Ginny.

""This is the strangest class I've ever taught. Anyway… After all, life existed on earth for 3.5 billion years before we arrived; why should life's causal ways match our prescriptions for human meaning or decency?" (1)

Ginny thought about that. "It does make sense. Magic spells do work in the same way no matter who's casting them, whether it's Voldemort or…" She hesitated. She had been going to say _Dumbledore,_ and then _Harry,_, but before she even spoke their names, she knew that neither of them were exactly shining examples of perfect goodness. "Some wonderful person," she finished rather lamely. "And I think I know why Lucius Malfoy really, really didn't like this part."

"Ah, Miss Weasley, I see that you have hatched a theory. We shall make a scientist of you yet," said Darwin with a twinkle in his eye.

"Natural selection meant that purebloods weren't superior, and that was bad enough," said Ginny. "But this would've been even worse for him, because it would have meant something that he couldn't control. And Lucius Malfoy wanted to control everything."

"You're right about that," Gould said quietly.

Ginny rubbed her temples. "I'm getting a headache."

"Dr. Flubbettygubbett's BC Powders are most useful for that purpose, I have been given to understand," said Darwin.

"The girl just needs to eat. Ginny, maybe you could boil one of those owls hanging around the window outside?"

"Ick," she said, shuddering. "I'm not _that_ hungry. I'll figure out something."

"In that case…Steve, I believe that we may as well take our leave at this point," said Darwin, buttoning his waistcoat. "Miss Weasley, I bid you a very fond farewell. Perhaps we shall meet again."

"I hope so," said Ginny.

"I saw a most curious set of golden arches on the horizon," Darwin said to Gould. "They appear to be under the ownership of a Scottish gentleman by the name of McDonald. Perhaps we could rendezvous at said location."

"Go ahead, Chaz," said Gould. "Ginny, listen to me."

"What is it?" she asked warily.

"Chaz is right. I know you'd rather not hear about this, but I'm _begging_ you, watch out for Draco's father."

It was the last straw. "How many times do I have to tell both of you?" she said irritably. "Look, I'm sure you mean well, but he's _dead_! Dead dead dead! Deceased! He has expired! He is no more! He is a late Lucius Malfoy!"

Ginny punctuated each of her last words by stabbing the table. With the last stab, it belatedly dawned on her that her fingers were sliding off a book. She looked down at it. _An Extremely Educational Sciencey-Type Book by a Friendly Famous Scientist who Explains Science to You, Whoever You May Be._ It had fallen open to the back jacket. Her forefinger had landed right on the empty photo frame. Directly beneath it was his name and birthdate.

_Stephen Jay Gould. 1941…_

There was a second date. It looked very fresh and new, and Ginny stopped.

Gould wasn't a wizard, of course; no scientist could have been that. But now that he had entered the wizarding world, he was ruled by its laws, and she was looking at the consequences of one of them. The date of his death had been neatly and automatically filled in by spells. _May 20th, 2002._ Ginny's heart sank. _He died exactly one week ago today!_

"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I'm so, so sorry. But I didn't know."

"_Ishkabibble,_ I'm the one who should be sorry," sighed Gould. "I've said enough."

"No! It's just that I—I mean, only a _week_ ago, I had no idea-" She pointed at the birth-and-death dates on the book.

"Oh! That. It's still a little late to be sorry, don't you think?" He smiled sadly. " You know, I really did accomplish most of the things I wanted to do. Two years ago, the U.S. Congress finally named me as a 'Living Legend of Science'… very thoughtful of them. My greatest regret is that I never played shortstop for the New York Yankees. Not very realistic, I know, but we all need our dreams. But I died with my wife and children around me, surrounded by my beloved books." He looked at the landscape behind the book's portrait, examining it curiously. "Now if you want to talk about a shock, _this_is it. I was a lifelong atheist, you know, so it was quite a surprise to me to end up anywhere at all. I'd love to know more about how this distinctly odd afterlife came to pass, and why."

"I don't know," said Ginny. "It's just how things work out in my world for ghost authors. We're not much for scientific explanations of these things; we don't even _have_ any wizarding scientists, as you know. I've never thought about it before, but I do wonder why not."

"Hmm. I think it's because science has nothing to say about magic, and in your world, magic has crossed over from the realm of the supernatural into the natural. In all honesty, I think I'd get bored with it pretty fast, although it would be fascinating to fit flobberworms into the taxonomy of species. But translating the spirit of scientific inquiry into the ability to get things done by waving a wand around and chanting a spell- _oy!_" Gould dismissed the possibility with a wave of his hand. "This entire thing still seems pretty inexplicable, though. Don't tell me that I'm going to have to start believing in God on top of everything else!"

Ginny shrugged. "I really couldn't say. But there's definitely a Devil; I've met _him_. He drinks loads of coffee, and he's related to Draco Malfoy. He's about as annoying as you'd expect with that sort of background."

"Hmm," said Gould. "This is indeed a strange and disturbing universe. After all of this is over, I've absolutely got to look up my old friend Carl Sagan. There's bound to be an afterlife library that carries _Cosmos._"

"Good idea," said Ginny. She didn't have the faintest idea who Carl Sagan might be, but she'd decided that at the moment, it might be better for the continued stability of the few brain cells she had left to _not_ know, really.

"Goodbye, Ginny," said the scientist. "Until we meet again." And then he was gone, and she was sitting at the table by herself.

She was alone now, all right, but her brain had never felt so crowded. Her thoughts lurched from one subject to the next, butterflies and cataclysms and comets, Tom Riddle taking books out of the Forbidden Section at the Hogwarts library fifty years before with a sinister smile on his horribly handsome face, Lucius Malfoy throwing books against the wall at Malfoy Manor while Draco stared at him sullenly… and later that night, when his father came to his rooms and whispered promises, wishes fulfilled, and rewards long dangled just out of his grasp that could be dropped in his lap at last.

_Lucius Malfoy tried to poison his son's mind with that shite,_ she thought. _It really didn't work, did it? Everything I saw, happened during what would have been his seventh year, so it was after the sixteen-year-old portrait-Draco. But there was still something left about him that was innocent, even after everything he'd seen, and everything he'd done._

She had seen in Draco Malfoy's eyes just how desperately he wanted her with him then. She could make a pretty fair guess at the pleasure, the relief, and the incredible release from the tension and misery of that year he would have felt if she'd shown up in his bed, and not only because it would have meant he'd soon get all the sex he wanted from her. Ginny rather thought that Draco would have felt all those things before he'd even laid a hand on her body. It was certainly true that at the time, she'd wanted nothing to do with him. If Lucius Malfoy had dragged her there with a spell, Ginny knew exactly what sort of hate and resentment and savage fury she would have felt. True, there would have been a shamefully strong physical craving at the bottom of it all. But the very fact that Draco stirred up sexual desire in her would have only driven her to suppress it all the more furiously. Ginny really thought that her first impulse probably would have been to try to stab him with his own wand. But the truth was that her feelings would have made no difference.

Ginny bit her lip. _It's true. Come on, I know it is, no matter how awful it is to even think this… it's nothing but the truth, and I won't run from that anymore._ She would have had no choice in the matter. She could have fought Draco as hard as she liked, she could have kicked and screamed and struggled with all her strength, but none of it would have done any good. In the end, she would simply have been… Ginny forced her mind to finish the terrible reality of what might so easily have happened to her three years before. _Locked up. Raped. Forced to bear the pureblood Malfoy heirs._

Again, her bound self curled up into a ball on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets. Lucius Malfoy whispered in her ear, and she writhed helplessly.

_I hold the power to offer Draco his obsession, his dream of perfect purity. And that is you._

Draco would have had that from her, all right. But he would have had to take it by force, because she never would have given it to him of her own free will. Not when he was still seventeen years old at Malfoy Manor, cruel and frightened and trapped between his father and Lord Voldemort.

But then had come the incredible part, the unbelievable moment. He had known, he'd _admitted_, that she wanted nothing to do with him, and that fact had made all the difference in the world when she'd thought that it would have made none at all. He had refused to reach out his hand and take her. Ginny turned that truth over and over in her mind; she had to believe it because she'd seen it, but she knew that she never would have done otherwise. She didn't know _why_ she was so sure; it was as if a dim, long-forgotten, almost-memory lurked at the very back of her mind.

_Would you like to know exactly how my father planned for it to go?_  
_Would you like to hear what he wanted me to do?_  
_I thought about letting my father bring you to me, all right._  
_And you would have been mine. Mine. All mine. Wouldn't you?_

But surely Draco Malfoy had never told her any of these things. They were only her imagination, no more. And no matter what he might have thought in his secret heart during all that long, terrible year, he hadn't gone along with it in the end.

For the first time, Ginny felt something like pure pity for the boy that Draco Malfoy had been. Was it possible to feel this, just pure, almost detached pity without all of the frantic desire that made her feel like she was coming apart, piece by piece? Could she feel something for him without needing something for herself so desperately, so _painfully_?

Her stomach gave a loud, sudden, violent growl. _Hmmph,_ she thought. _Even if he deserved pity when he was seventeen years old, that was then, and this is now._ She ran her fingers along the spines of the three evolution books, thinking about some of the ideas she had learned in the last hour.

_Organisms adapted to their local environments, and those that did not adapt, did not survive_ Draco Malfoy certainly adapted. He had more lives than a bloody _cat._. _This is the Darwinian process of natural selection._ Why should Malfoy have survived when so many had died, her brother Fred among them? Even if he'd behaved vaguely like a halfway decent human being by refraining from rape and murder at a few points in his life, had he ever done anything, _anything_, to deserve survival? _Evolution is not a theory of progress, only of adaptation._ Well, she would put all her imaginary galleons on Stephen Jay Gould being right about that. Ginny couldn't believe that Draco Malfoy represented any great progression of the human spirit. He was beautiful, but empty. There was nothing to him now, whatever potential he had once possessed, nothing behind that gorgeous exterior. There couldn't be.

Yet… Ginny traced her fingernails over embossed drawings of echinoderms on a leather cover. They danced in a complicated pattern. Her mind kept catching on one thing. There had to be a point at which Draco Malfoy suffered a sea change, into something rich, all right—because he inherited the Malfoy money after his father died and he managed to bamboozle the Wizengamot—but decidedly strange, and that was what she still did not understand. His innocence had hardened into a glossy, impenetrable surface, and she'd seen flashes of something frightening and dark behind it, over and over again. _Voldemort's ideas. His father's ideas._ Could they have had anything to do with it? What about… she grimaced, but the thought had to be faced. _What about Marie?_ She tried to force her mind back to the entire subject of Voldemort. It was less disturbing.

_All right, maybe just go in a whole different direction… what did Voldemort and the war do to us all? Who knows how Harry would've turned out without that? He probably would have been quite a decent person. And I… oh, gods, I don't want to think about that. My life, without Tom Riddle, without Voldemort._ Ginny covered her face. _Something terrible will happen soon, Daphne said. Well, that's easy to believe. I think I'm getting as bad as she is. I'm starting to see onrushing disaster on all sides._ But Stephen Jay Gould had said that evolution only moved forward because of disasters, the terrible opportunities caused by catastrophes. _She_ certainly felt as if everything in her life had come perilously close to destruction in a terrifyingly short time; it had only been a matter of days since she'd first jumped into the cataclysm that was Draco Malfoy… _fuck! I'm back to thinking about him again! Well, so much for trying to take a broad view of things. It was dreadfully depressing anyway._

Ginny sighed and shifted position in the chair, then got up and went into the kitchen. The fridge was empty except for one forlorn-looking bottle of milk. She tipped it upside down. The whitish matter in the bottom had turned solid. Shuddering, she threw it in the trash. On her way back to the table, her foot kicked at something. She reached down to pick it up, and saw that it was the tiny, crumpled-up ball of Draco's note. _I'm going to die if I don't know what the rest of it said,_ she admitted to herself. She unwrapped it and smoothed it out.

_Just wait for me-_

There was a blank line. Then the handwriting picked up again, but it looked as it had been written in a different pen. The strokes were more erratic, not as sure and strong.

_Weasley, it's hours later. I've come back, but I won't tell you what I've been doing, of course. I don't want to burden you with that knowledge. Loki knows, I wish I didn't have to remember it myself. I'm tired, more tired than I've ever been in my life, maybe, so tired that I don't know what I'm writing, or even what I'm thinking. I nearly tore up this parchment and sent the letter of credit without it. But I won't. I won't. I'll write everything in it, and you can decide what to do._

Wait for me. Save yourself for me. I'll come for you. 

She dropped the note. A kaleidoscope of images flashed through her mind, an alternate path, a thread of evolution that might have unfolded after the cataclysm that was Draco Malfoy.

_She was waiting one night very soon, perhaps even tomorrow. She'd accepted the letter of credit, and she'd bought scented candles, expensive black silk lingerie, creams and lotions for her body, champagne cooling in a bucket of ice. Draco came through the door with a large bouquet of blood-red roses. She reached for them, but he shook his head and put them in a vase. Then without warning, without preamble, he pushed her back towards the bed, his hands hungry and demanding and dominant._

"Surrender, Weasley," he whispered, and "yes," she sighed. 

"_Mine," Draco would sobbed as he took her and she received him."Mine, mine, all mine. My ..."_

But what name did he say then? Ginny? Or Marie?

Ginny picked up the letter again, shaken by the power of her own fantasies. They had seemed to come out of nowhere. Maybe the note had some sort of spell on it, and Draco had planted them in her mind, and—She stopped. No. It wasn't true, and she knew it. She went on to read the next line.

_Don't wait for me. I can never come back for you. Don't let me in, if I try.  
_

Her mind crafted new images. They were so unfamiliar to her that it took some time to come up with them, and they were rather vague, but she was creating art, and she was shaping the Ginny who she was beginning to dimly see within herself.__

I think I'll go mad if I don't get some sleep. Maybe the best thing you could do would be to ignore all of this rubbish. But the choice is yours, Weasley. Whichever way you choose.

-DM  


She let the note fall from her hand.

_The choice is yours, Weasley. _

Yes. It was.

Something was starting to move in Ginny's head, like puzzle pieces steadily sliding together. The need for food was growing dim and distant. Figures shaped themselves before her inner eyes.

Lucius Malfoy, his tall, sinister figure, all in black. So like Draco, yet so unlike. Tom Riddle was in him somehow too, inextricably mixed up, and the twisted figure of Voldemort.

Draco Malfoy. His impossible innocence, his painful perfection, his heartbreaking beauty. Then the subtle, indefinable change, and the darkness that fell upon him. Had he walked all the way down its path, though?

Her own face in the mirror, staring back at her. Ginny traced her cheekbones, her chin, the feathery curve of her eyebrows.

The catastrophe had engulfed them all. Some had survived. Some had not. Some things changed, and some remained the same. The question, the mystery, still remained: how to know which was which?

In her mind, a silvery-gray butterfly soared above a burning sea of tears. She wondered if it would reach the other side.

Something was starting to thrum through her head, tendrils spreading through her hands all the way to her fingertips. Something was itching on the surface of her skin.

She grabbed her sketchbook, and her pencil flew across the paper, as light and silvery and relentless as the wings of a butterfly that had survived a cataclysm which tore a planet to pieces.

Evolution has no neat and tidy end, as Ginny was soon to learn, but when she looked back on everything later, she knew that this had been the beginning.

**Author notes:** (1) These are direct quotes from Gould's essay, _Darwinian Fundamentalism_, published June 12, 1997 in the _New York Review of Books._


	35. Ginny's Visitors

/N: Thanks to all the readers and reviewers, especially:Alpha, Alpha again, and Victoria. 

There's a DDD Lexicon on FIA (plot summary, characters, timeline, magical objects and places, spells, etc.,) and I'll probably post it here too pretty soon. And don't forget to check out my blog! There are some very cool things coming up soon, including a link to my new Youtube video of… okay, I'm not even going to say what it is until I have it done and up, and my brother has to send me the pic first so that I can actually make the video in AfterFX, but it's going to be pretty unbelievable. Watch for more news soon!

+++

"I'm breaking down this door," said a surly and disturbingly familiar voice.

Ginny was somewhere else, of course, millions and millions of miles from any sort of normal world that could possibly contain that voice, walking with ghosts and gods and demons, flying on the backs of countless silvery-gray butterflies, riding on the ends of a never-ending stream of pencils as they soared across sheets of drawing paper. So she couldn't have heard the voice. She never did, at times like that.

But the voice was just so _familiar._

"I'm quite afraid that won't work. If _I'd_ broken down the door at some point, perhaps you could, but of course I haven't, because Ginny's always been quite happy to let me in without my breaking it down. But as it is—"

That one was, too.

"I don't care! I'm breaking down this bloody door!"

"Calm down, little bro. Could be there's a spell we haven't tried yet."

And that third one.

"We've tried every spell there is. I'll bet _Malfoy's_ in there. He's probably using some sort of sneaky evil Death Eater mind-meld to keep her from answering the door. I'm breaking down the door, and then I'm tearing him to shreds with my bare hands. I don't need a wand."

"Of course Draco Malfoy isn't in there." That second voice was higher and wispier than the others, Ginny realized dimly. "He's still on Vendetta Island. No… that isn't right, is it? Blaise said he'd gone on somewhere else. I don't know if Astoria was even _with_ him. It doesn't sound like a very nice honeymoon to me."

"_Blaise Zabini_? Luna, what are you doing hanging about with Zabini?"

A pause.

"Remember what I told you about the Zigzag-Horned Snorkacks, Ron?" Considering the odd subject matter, thought Ginny, there was very little that was dreamy about the voice now.

_Ron_? Ginny blinked and staggered to her feet. Dozens of sheets of paper completely surrounded her on all sides, strewn on the table, falling onto the floor, slipping into her lap, all covered with drawings. She stared at them. As usual after a bout of artistic possession, they did not quite seem to be hers, and yet she knew that when she created them, she had been more herself than at any time in her entire life.

But there was still something missing. The thought slipped into her head before she could stop it. There was something she hadn't got quite right yet... or no, perhaps it wasn't exactly that. Something remained incomplete.

She hobbled to the door. Both of her feet were asleep. "We ought to use a Dynamite hex," Ron was saying now.

"No, we shouldn't," said the third voice. "You're a bit too fond of the sorts of ideas that always seem to end up getting us in trouble with the Muggle police. Brings back old times, though."

Oh, how well Ginny knew that voice. It belonged to the brother who had left the shed door open so that she could steal his brooms for flying practice when she was ten years old; who had swung her up in his arms so far that she had nearly touched the sun; who had rescued her from the deep end of the village pond when she swam out too far; who had revolved quietly in the dazzling shadow of his twin until suddenly he had stood alone and she had understood that she loved him for himself, not as half of an incomplete whole. She threw the door open.

"George!" she exclaimed, her voice hoarse, as if she hadn't spoken a word with it in ages, and she felt her older brother envelop her in his arms. A wave of dizziness ran through Ginny, and she nearly fell.

"Steady, Gin," he said in her ear.

"I'm _so_ hungry," she groaned. "I haven't eaten in forever and ever. When is it? What day, I mean? Or is it daytime? It might be night, I suppose. I lost track."

George held her back from him, and his slow, easy smile spread over his face. _So like Fred,_ she thought, with that all-too-familiar inner pain that owed nothing to the near-starvation gnawing at her. _But so unlike, too._ "You're on an art binge, aren't you?"

"Yes—yes, George, and oh, it's a really good one. I think it's the best I've ever had."

"See? See? I told you so. Why wouldn't you listen to me?" demanded Ron. "She can't even stand up. I _told_ you Malfoy had done something bloody awful to her. Just let me get my hands on that wanker—"

"Do be quiet, Ronald Bilius Weasley," snapped Luna, with an even more notable lack of her normal dreaminess.

Ron opened his mouth, and then shut it again. His face was turning a color that came remarkably close to matching his hair, Ginny thought. She felt a sudden, irrational wave of love for him. "It's all right, Ron," she said, drawing him into the fraternal hug. "It's just that I'm starving to death."

"Oh. _Oh._ Here! We brought loads of food. Sit down. I'll feed you. Don't move a muscle. You'll use up even more energy." Ron ineffectually tried to clear off the table. "What's all this, then? Oh, it's art. I'd better not get pizza sauce on it I suppose—"

"I will beat you to death with that pepperoni if you do," said Ginny. She slithered bonelessly into a chair and watched George and Luna carefully stack the drawings on racks while Ron frantically ran from kitchen to front room with plates, bags, bottles, baskets of fruit, pizza boxes, and an enormous basket of chocolates. He poured Ginny a large glass of milk and hovered anxiously over her while she drank it.

"Ron!" she finally said. "You don't need to set up intravenous feeding. _Really._"

"You're all right, then?"

"Yes."

"I want to see you eat this pizza."

"I'm _eating_ it, Ron."

"That's not enough. Another piece. Are you _sure_ Malfoy isn't about somewhere? More milk. You've only drunk half a glass—"

"That's _enough_, Ron! What are you doing—channeling Mum?"

There was a brief, awkward silence.

"Sorry," sighed Ginny.

"Don't be. We heard about the owls," said Ron.

"I suppose this is the part where you say that Mum's being rather difficult, and she'll come round," said Ginny.

Ron toyed with a grape. "Not really, no. Mum's still brassed off at me because I won't talk to Harry. Or Hermione, for that matter."

"I, uh… I thought you _were_ talking to them," admitted Ginny.

Ron's eyebrows drew together into a thick, angry line. "After the way they've treated you? After the things we've heard from Percy?"

Ginny looked from Ron to George. "So you're talking to Percy again?"

George gave her his slow smile. "Nothing like a bloody awful mess to bring the Weasley sibs back together, eh?"

And they were back together, she thought gratefully, as thoroughly as if there had never been that subtle, far-reaching rupture. Luna stayed discreetly in the background, and Ginny sat round the table with her brothers and talked, and talked, and basked in the warmth of being with them again. She wondered nervously if she ought to say anything about Draco Malfoy. _Ron obviously knows something, anyway…_ When she tried to catch Luna's eye, however, the other girl looked up at the ceiling and began to whistle the _Chudley Cannon Fight Song,_ very softly. Ginny wondered if that should be taken as a hint, and decided that it might be safer to do so.

She was never quite sure afterwards how it happened, but George somehow or other managed to deftly steer the conversation so that Ron became convinced that Rita Skeeter had invented the entire Malfoy connection from the whole cloth. Ginny was left rather in admiration of how very neatly it was done, and wondered if her older brother had ever considered a career in the diplomatic service.

"Bloody stupid bitch—uh, sorry, Gin—Luna—but Skeeter wouldn't know the truth if it hopped up and bit her on the arse. _Sorry._ 'Strue, though." Ron moodily ate an entire slice of pizza in one bite.

"You're so right," agreed Ginny with a silent sigh of relief. George had distinctly _winked_ at her. To cover up her confusion, she started in on the chocolate truffles.

She had just reached the ones with raspberry filling when an owl tapped on the window. Her fingernails sank convulsively into the sweets, leaving red trails behind them. _Oh gods no. But it really could be from Draco Malfoy, couldn't it? Who else could actually get an owl through the Shield?_

Ron scowled and shoved his chair back. "I told him to leave us the fuck alone—oh, Gin- Lu—all right, if you're in this room and you're a girl, you're simply going to have to ignore half of everything I say."

He couldn't mean Draco, Ginny realized. Ron wouldn't have _told_ him anything, because verbal communication most definitely would not have been involved, aside from perhaps something along the lines of "Time to die for what you've done to my sister, Malfoy." She scrambled to her feet, too. Ron attempted the unlikely feat of holding her back while getting to the window himself at the same time.

George shook his head. "Might as well let her see, Ron. She's got to know already anyway."

Her heart sank. Harry was standing outside, in the shadow of a tree.

"How did that owl get through?" she hissed to George. "This building's Shielded!"

He sighed. "It was meant for Ron, not you. Harry's got access to enough privileges to break through even a Shield like this in that case."

"Because of his position in the Department of Mysteries," Ginny said flatly. George nodded.

"He still wants to talk to me, of course," said Ron, crumpling up the note.

"You really might as well get it over with, you know," said George.

"'Spose you're right," said Ron. He flashed them a cheeky grin. "Luna, if I don't come back in ten minutes, send a Zigzag-Horned Snorkack after me, all right?"

"That does sound like it might be a good plan," said Luna, fishing through the truffles. "I'm fairly sure I remember the exact call that will summon them."

"Zigzag-Horned Snorkacks?" whispered Ginny.

"They attack the overly curious," Luna said serenely. "I think that this would be a lovely time to go to the loo and stay there until the two of you are quite done having a private brother-sister moment."

Luna certainly did have a way of making the situation entirely clear, thought Ginny.

As soon as Ron's clattering footsteps had faded down the stairs, George turned to Ginny and shoved a bag into her hands. "Here," he said. "Thirty galleons. You're taking it. I don't want to hear any more about it. Ron doesn't know, because if he did, he'd bluster at you, and you'd just exhibit more and more of the Weasley pig-headed stubbornness."

"But you can't afford—"

"I can. The joke shop's doing very well."

"But I can't take—"

"Remember that time Charlie locked you in the broom shed when you were eight years old, because you felt sorry for the baby dragons he kept in pens and you wouldn't stop setting them all free? Remember how I rescued you?"

"Um… _yes_…"

"We've been developing a series of Time Machine Toffees. If you don't take this bag of Galleons and shut up right this second, I'll force you to eat some experimental models. And this time, I _won't_ let you out of that shed." George looked at her sternly.

Ginny gulped. She wasn't nearly as sure as she might have been, say, the day before that this was an empty threat. After all, if Charles Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould could randomly turn up and explain theories of evolution, what was to keep George from finding a book written by the Muggle inventor of the time machine? Or… wait…. _had_ Muggles invented time machines yet? At any rate, she took the bag of money.

"Glad you decided to see reason, Gin," said George. "I know you need it for those little non-essentials like food, eh?"

"Yeah, I do. Thanks," said Ginny. "Wait a minute… how did you know I needed money?"

"Luna texted me about that charmer Mrs. Fustian sacking you from Sans and Serif," George said grimly. "Don't worry. She'll get hers; we're still thinking up something truly diabolical. And also—" He stopped. "Ron can't know about this part, of course. But Luna dropped a hint about something Zabini told her, and the upshot was that you were in financial straits."

"Why can't Ron know anything about it?" Ginny asked guardedly.

"Well, he can't stand Zabini, of course. I'm not too fond of him myself. But that's not the real problem. I can figure out at least a bit of what isn't said; that'll never be Ron's greatest talent." George gave her a serious look. "Skeeter didn't really just invent everything out of the whole cloth, did she, Gin? When it comes to you and Malfoy, I mean?"

Ginny dropped her eyes, unable to meet his searching, sherry-brown gaze.

"Luna didn't actually tell me anything. Don't blame her," George added quickly.

Luna popped her head out of the loo, all of her yellowish hair hanging straight upside down so that it looked like a strange sort of mop. "It's true," she assured Ginny. "I didn't. You've got such dead clever brothers. And the best part is that they're all clever in such different ways." The door slammed shut again.

"Maybe it wasn't all a complete invention," Ginny admitted. "But the truth just wasn't what those horrible stories said. It really wasn't, George." _No, because the truth was about a thousand times worse!_ she thought.

"I just hope you know what you've got yourself into."

"I haven't got myself into anything. Or—well—if I had, I got myself out of it again. Let's not talk about it anymore, all right?" Ginny walked over to the window, knowing that George was following her. Ron was stabbing his finger into Harry's chest on the sidewalk, she saw with a twinge of alarm.

"It'll be all right," said George. "I've got him covered with Protection charms. You didn't think I was going to let him talk to Harry without that, I hope."

They both watched for another few moments. Harry was shaking his head now, and spreading out his open hands. Ron crossed his arms over his chest.

"I looked at your art, Gin, and I don't understand a bit of it," said George. "I suppose that means that it's quite exceptionally good."

She rolled her eyes. "These are only the beginning sketches. And _I_ don't understand it either. But yes, if it's like that at the very start, that always seems to mean that it's going to be something—extra—when it's done. I'll look at it and say to myself, 'I know who I am when I go to sleep every night and when I get up every morning, or at least I think so, so how did this person, who I thought I knew, produce this extraordinary thing?'"

"Mm. I think that makes more sense if you're an artist. Are you just doing it freelance?"

"No, it's for Zenobia Smith. She has that _Bas-Bleu_ studio down on Udødelighed Street."

"Right; it's that queer Danish name, I can never remember," said George. "There's always been something odd about that entire family, you know. They're purebloods, so we ought to be able to trace them back dogs' years, but about fifty years or so, they all seem to go _sub rosa_ and then the next generation reappears ages later on some other continent. But…" He grinned. "I never told anybody, but I always rather liked Zacharias Smith. He couldn't stand Harry at any price back at school. Can't believe Smith's working as an Auror, actually; he has to be cheek by jowl with Harry all the bloody time now. I'd go mad and slaughter everybody in sight after about a week of it, personally."

"You'd never get your Ministry pension then," Ginny said absently, still looking down at Ron and Harry. _Zacharias Smith._ She remembered where she had last seen him now. He'd been with the Aurors a few days ago, when they'd cornered Draco and Astoria in the alley behind _Bas-Bleu_, and she herself had got stuck in the entire mess. Astoria had been clinging to his side and all but giggling and batting her eyelashes, and Ginny had assumed that it was only because she knew that the Smith family had money. But what if there was more to it, somehow? After all, she certainly hadn't given up on getting Draco to marry her then; anything but, in fact. Ginny's eyes narrowed in thought. No. She really couldn't believe that Astoria had even begun to move on so fast. And if she remembered correctly, the blonde slag had spent the entire time whispering in his ear, asking questions, trying to get answers. So why-

On the sidewalk, Ron shoved Harry away from him. George groaned. "I _told_ him that Protection charm was still in the testing stages! Why does Ron always have to do something so bloody _stupidly_ brave. If I've told him once, I've told him a thousand times that he can be a full-fledged Weasley _without_ the "stupidly" part always having to be tacked onto everything."

But Ron stormed up the front walk unharmed, and a few moments later, he was hammering viciously on the door. Ginny sighed, and went to let him in. Luna slipped out of the loo at the same moment.

"Goodbye," she said, tucking her hair up under a large floppy hat that looked as if it had elephantiasis.

"But I've hardly had a chance to talk to you,"protested Ginny.

"Oh, I think this was more of a sibling communication sort of day," said Luna.

"But—" Ginny dropped her voice to a whisper. "But what about Blaise? What happened with him? And Dean? Luna, really, you've just got to tell me something-"

"All right. I'll make this quick." Luna went a little pale, and she bent down to Ginny so that her mouth was at her ear. "I figured out you needed money because you didn't answer her text messages and Blaise told me about the standard Malfoy offer that you refused, so I texted George, because he has a Muggle cell phone, and then—"

"Blaise knows?" hissed Ginny.

"Yes. I've got to say this all at once or I'll lose my nerve and I'll never be able to say it again." Luna took a deep breath and began speaking very rapidly.

"I'm not Blaise Zabini's girlfriend so please don't ever ever ask me about him or refer to the past two days ever again at any point in our entire lives unless I bring it up first and I don't think I will because every time I ever even think about it I think my heart is just going to crack into a million little pieces and I'll fall apart all over the street. Yes, yes I know that he didn't shag Daphne and I think she's a decent sort really even though at first I thought oh what the fuck is it about these Greengrass bitches, look what Astoria did to Ginny. But Blaise and I had a terrible row yesterday after I left here and he just kept saying that the last couple of days had been lovely but he never said that he actually cared about me and he just kept saying that he didn't know if he knew how to care about anyone that way because he didn't have any proper practice in it. I finally said I was leaving and I went out the door and slammed it hard even though I could hear him saying Luna Luna Luna come back Luna please oh please Luna behind it. I did it just the same because I was afraid that being with Blaise would be like when I'd gone sea-bathing with my father when I was very small and got in over my head and thought I was going to drown and _oh_ my heart hurts so much I think I'm going to die."

Luna gasped, and then looked at Ginny with her huge, lamp-like eyes. "Perhaps it's a bit like you and Draco Malfoy."

Ginny found nothing to say to that. The door opened; Luna slipped out, and Ron stomped in.

"Don't know why I even bothered with that," he said, without preamble. "Same old rubbish. He expects the Golden Trio to come together again. He thinks I can stay in the same room as Hermione for ten minutes running without us killing each other. He'd probably be happy as a flobberworm in slop if we got back together again. I'd sooner hex myself in the foot and then run a one-legged marathon." One corner of his mouth turned up, and he glanced at Ginny. "Yeah, yeah; I know. Her and Harry, right? I'm not quite so thick as I look, Gin. What a marvelous idea it would be to step in the middle of _that_ on top of everything else. Not that I'd ever think of doing it anyway." Ron cleared his throat.

"Harry keeps wanting to talk to you," he went on. "I told him it was a no go, and that George and I would get together and hex him into so many pieces that the entire Ministry couldn't patch them all together again if he tried it."

"I left you some Protection spell buttons," said George. "Problem is, they're only good for about twenty minutes each. This flat is very well Shielded, thank gods. I tested the wards, and even we couldn't have begun to get through them without Luna taking us."

"Yeah… why does this place have such a really excellent Shield?" Ron asked frowning.

"It's standard with all Gringotts properties," said Ginny as smoothly as she could.

"But how did you get a Gringotts flat in the first place? They're really, really expensive, I've always heard."

"It was a loan."

"But why'd they give a Weasley a loan?"

"Uh—"

"Look," said George, elbowing his brother in the ribs. Harry was trudging away from the building downstairs. "Should be safe to leave in just a minute now."

Ginny watched him go, thinking how strange it seemed that from behind, she couldn't even tell who he was. He wasn't Harry Potter anymore, the savior of the wizarding world; he was only a sad, slumped figure, oddly alone. She saw Ron watching him too.

"It's all right, you know," she said. "You were his best friend for years and years. You don't have to pretend you weren't, just for my sake."

"I'm not," said Ron. "It hurts. I won't say it doesn't. Even though it's really over. Maybe it even hurts more, because I know just how over and done with it is. I thought we'd always be best mates, you know? But he moved on somewhere I couldn't follow, or didn't want to. He'll go a lot further than I will, I'd reckon, but I don't particularly want to end up there."

"I have the strangest feeling about that, sometimes," said George. "But if I tell you what it is, I'm afraid you're going to think I'm mad."

"We already think that," said Ginny. "Didn't you know?"

"Oh, no." He smiled faintly. "I'm the rational, sober one, remember? But I've got to break out of the pattern once in a way, after all. I almost think I can see the future sometimes—oh, not like Sybil Trelawney or any of that rubbish. It's more like a sort of common sense, based on looking at what's going on at the moment. Anyway, I could see Harry Potter leading the entire wizarding world somewhere, or trying to. Becoming Minister of Magic, or some such thing. But I don't think it would be anywhere good; I don't think it would be in the right direction. I think we're already headed in the wrong one too much as it is, and all he'd do would be to make it worse."

Ginny drummed her fingers against the windowsill. Things were beginning to shift and change in her head again, and the blank sheets of paper in the drawers were starting to whisper to her. "How so?" she asked, because the question felt important.

"We're already clinging too tightly to the way we were before the war," said George.

"I was in the Ministry atrium a couple of days ago," Ginny said slowly. "It looked the same. _Exactly_ the same. They'd restored everything to exact prewar condition. Even the statues at the Fountain of Magical Brethren were recreated perfectly."

"That's the most bloody awful thing I've ever seen in all my life," said Ron. "It's enough to put you off your food. I mean, I may not know much about art, but I know what I like." He flushed guiltily. "Sorry, Gin. I suppose that isn't exactly the sort of thing that modern artists like to hear."

"Doesn't matter," she said. She even remembered exactly what she'd thought when she saw it all. _It all felt so utterly unreal, because nothing had changed, when everything, everything in the world, had changed around it so completely…_

"Gin? Are you all right?" she could hear somebody saying from very far away.

"Mm-hm," she said, opening drawers, searching for pencils, the fire starting behind her hands, the figures dancing behind her eyes. She knew what it was, the last thing she still needed, the last thing she was missing. She'd _found_ it. Harry had to be in there too, and her fear for their precarious world in the balance, and the knowledge that wizards might not evolve enough to grow past the catastrophe that had been Voldemort. Not all the butterflies made it through the storm, after all.

_And Draco._ Always, always there was the mystery that was Draco Malfoy, the force that sent her pencil flying across the page. There was no stopping it, now that she had put together all the missing pieces.

"Gin? She doesn't _look_ all right."

"She can't hear you." Creaking footsteps. Someone touched her arm.

"Gin, I'm not leaving you like this—"

The touch was pulled away. "Great art is being made. Or some sort of art, anyway. If you interrupt the process, I'll test those Flying Fang-Toothed Dungbombs on you. I've got some in my backpack, you know."

"George, you don't fight fair. I've always said so."

A low chuckle. "You wouldn't want me any other way. Come on, Ron. Let's leave her to the divine madness."

**Author notes:** I know... we don't really get a Draco here... but he WILL show up very soon! ;)


	36. Intimations of Immortality

Thanks to all readers and reviewers.

The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on.

Rhett to Scarlett in _Gone With the Wind._

+++

"What do you mean, Ginny can't see me! Of _course_ she'd want to see _me._ I'm her dearest friend—sorry, Luna. I'm on her top two list of dearest friends. How's that? Anyway, she'd definitely want to see me."

"I didn't say she wouldn't want to see you, Colin. I said that she _couldn't_ see you just now."

"Whatever do you mean? Unless she's suddenly been hit by a Blinding hex, of course she can see me."

"I'm afraid not. She can't see anything but her art."

A pause. Some scuffling noises.

"Let me in that studio, Luna. Open that door right now."

"No."

"What—what _is_ that?" The voice sounded nervous now. "Did I just get a glimpse of something with zigzaggy horns?"

"Perhaps. We're rather close to the Zigzag Snorkacks' natural habitat. Do you want to hear the Summoning Call? I'm almost sure I remember it. Let's see. I think it begins with an 'A-Oohgah…'"

An exasperated sigh. "Just tell me, is she eating enough? Does she have any money? What about you? I know you were fired from the Ministry last week."

"It's terribly sweet of you to worry, Col, but we're perfectly all right. I do wonder why everyone wants to _feed_ her. I'm doing a very good job of it. Goodbye."

"That wasn't a very subtle hint."

"I'm not terribly good at subtle, Col."

"I can be dreadful at it as well." The voice became petulant. "Blaise has been asking about you. He wants to know if you're all right. He's worried. He… oh, Luna, don't _cry!_"

Some sniffling. "Go away."

"I'm only going to come back, you know. And I'm terribly sorry… about that other thing, I mean. I never was very diplomatic, was I?"

"No. But I forgive you. It's worth it to keep coming back, you know. One of these days, Ginny will have returned to the world we both live in. Something tells me that she'll need you then."

Ginny heard the voices only vaguely. Later, she would learn that she had stayed at the table in the front room for three full days, straying from it only when Luna led her to the bathroom. Once or twice, Luna pushed her under the shower. She ate the plates of food that Luna shoved under her nose at regular intervals. Colin never gave up on knocking at the door, and conversations more or less identical to the first one were reenacted several times each day, but Ginny ignored them all. She drew, and drew, and drew, and then she got clay out and impatiently allowed Luna to spread dropcloths over the kitchen table and modeled, and modeled, and modeled. ("Only because otherwise clay _will_ have a way of getting into the scrambled eggs," Luna explained. "I don't think the flavor will be improved.") She drank gallons of coffee that Luna set at her elbow in enormous self-renewing cups.

By the end of the third day, she had finished all the models for the sculpture series that she would later call _Fossils._ Then she staggered to the little bedroom, fell into bed, and slept like the dead.

Almost.

_He sat under a high lamp hung from the ceiling; it poured a pool of light down onto his head, turning his hair to burnished silver, casting his face into shadow._

"I want her sent to France," he said. His voice was light and even, almost pleasant, but there was something… wrong in it, somehow. Ginny didn't know what. She felt the pervading sense of dread that she had only felt in dreams for a very long time now.

"Not possible that is," said an apologetic voice in front of him.

"Then _**make**__ it possible. Isn't that what I pay you for?"_

The goblin trembled. Ginny could see that the other speaker was a goblin now; he'd moved forward slightly, into the light. "Er… working on the project as of this very moment we are, yes yes…"

"You're working on it?" The wrongness in his voice spread and spread until it was running through Ginny's veins like a stream of icy water.

The goblin pressed his gnarled hands together. "Our very, very best doing we are, sir, but—er—"

"Then you've got to do better than your best,don't you?" he asked softly.

The goblin gulped.

"Of course you are," he said. "Gringotts has always served our family so very well. I have no fears at all." His words were almost friendly. Ginny wasn't sure when she had last heard anything so disturbing.

Or, no… she was sure. Yes, she was.

Get your hands off her, Potter. Don't you dare touch her. Do you hear me? Never, ever touch Ginny Weasley again. The voice of the predatory, possessive male.

"Yes, yes sir… of course…"

"Of course," he repeated. He leaned forward in his expensive leather chair, and he smiled. The light hit him fully. Ginny saw the face of Draco Malfoy in all its cold perfection. "You've always helped me to get what I want, haven't you?" 

She woke with a start.

Ginny sat up, clutching the sheets to her chest, suddenly aware that she was completely nude. She'd stripped off the clothes she'd been wearing for three days; she dimly remembered that now. Caught between dream and waking, all she could think for a moment was that Draco Malfoy had been sitting in the other room and she'd somehow spied on the scene. _I want her sent to France,_ he'd said. But who?

The answer came to her in a flash. _Astoria. He had to mean Astoria._ The Gringotts goblin had said it couldn't be done, but that would mean nothing to him, of course. What a Malfoy wanted, a Malfoy would get, one way or another. And now… and now…

_The bedroom door was opening._

A tremendous cloud of smoke billowed into the room. A hand poked through it, holding a pan with some unidentifiable blackened substance at the bottom. "Breakfast is ready. Only I _do_ think I've burnt these eggs just a bit," a female voice said vaguely."I don't quite know. What do you think?"

Ginny coughed. Then she scowled. The fear and menace of the dream were already dissolving, and she was left only with sheer self-disgust at her own relentlessly Malfoy-centric fantasies._Will I never learn?_ And yet it hadn't been any sort of fantasy. No. Remembering the look on Draco's face, she couldn't call it that.

Luna's face peeped through the thinning smoke, her blue eyes mildly concerned. "What an odd face you're making. Are you quite all right?"

She sighed, dropping back to the pillows. "I'm fine. And I suppose you might be able to get those eggs off with a chisel, Luna. I'll be out in a minute, and I can help, if you like."

As she scrubbed clay out of her hair in the shower, Ginny firmly informed her mind that she'd be able to find it in herself to say no to Draco Malfoy if he showed up at her bedroom door, all right. For emphasis, she'd hit him over the head with one of Luna's breakfast attempts. The burnt eggs had _nothing_ on her petrified oatmeal from their sixth year at Hogwarts. The two girls had agreed to strike the day on which Luna had originally served if from all of the calendars they could find, and as for the "toad-in-the-hole-of-horror experiment"… well, mutual Obliviation spell-casting had been seriously discussed.

Ginny shivered. _We might have done it, too,_ she thought. _Except… oh, except that I really,really hate Memory charms of any sort. I always have._ And she had never even really known why, she thought as she dressed in some of the clothes that Luna had brought from their flat. It was all mixed up with the nightmares about the Chamber of Secrets that she tried to never think about, and the hissing sound of Tom Riddle's voice turning into the silky, menacing one of Lucius Malfoy's.

_Such a silly little girl. Do you know now for whom I have always saved you, Ginny Weasley? I have the power to offer Draco his dream of perfect purity in you. But he will never be sure of your innocence until it is too late, and he will never trust you. I have seen to that._

_Draco! Always Draco!_ Ginny sighed. But surely that had never been anything more than a dream.

After a breakfast of stale cereal and dubious milk on the very edge of turning, Ginny coiled up her hair in a French braid and looked in the bathroom mirror.

"You're still so dreadfully pale, dear," it clucked at her. "Perhaps a bit more blush?"

"Shut it, you," she muttered. One of these days, she _was_ going to replace all the annoyingly mouthy objects in the house with silent Muggle ones. But she dabbed on more pink lipstick, feeling strangely deflated. She knew what the problem was, she thought dolefully. She'd lived in a blessedly Draco Malfoy-free world as long as she'd been busy creating art. But the minute she was done, every scrap of the obsession apparently had come flooding back. _I won't drown in him again,_ she thought grimly, shoving on her shoes. _I'll find my way out of the current, that's all, no matter what I'm doing._ She tried not to think too hard about the fact that she'd never learnt to swim.

Ginny stood in front of the four clay figures in the back room at _Bas-Bleu_. Luna had helped her to unwrap them, and then she'd gone to find Tony Goldstein, who would bring Zenobia Smith in to see them. They could have been delivered, of course, but Ginny wanted to be absolutely sure that the gallery owner was the very first person who saw them outside of her own studio. She couldn't have said why this desire was so strong, or why it felt so right that it should be so, but she did know better than to argue with the voice within when it spoke to her so very clearly. She wished it was speaking loudly enough to completely drown out the voice of panic, which it wasn't quite managing to do. She gnawed nervously on a fingernail.

_Oh, I can see it all now. That bitch Zenobia will come sauntering in with that contemptuous look on her face, she'll sniff at my art, she'll say that she might be able to reuse the clay for something else if I want to leave it here and she'll give me a few Knuts per pound, and then I'll punch her and the Muggle police will take me away. And when I'm locked in a prison cell, I'll have nothing to do at all except obsess about Draco Malfoy all day long!_

_And all night,_ her mind slyly added. _Don't forget about the nights._

_If you start replaying that Succubus thing again, just one more time-_

The door opened. She waited in front of her statues, trying very hard to look calm. Zenobia walked in, her beautiful, expensively made-up face faintly cynical, as always, her glossy black hair cut in a neat pageboy, her black suit understated and chic. She stopped dead in her tracks. For just an instant, Ginny's artistically trained eye saw something vast and eternal peep through the woman's dark gaze, as if a disguise had come close to slipping._Who is she, really? She reminds me of someone. Zach Smith does, too. Whoever it is, they don't exactly look the same as he does—whoever he is- but they are the same anyway, somehow. I can almost think- _Art and wizarding knowledge briefly met, but Ginny could not quite put the two together to realize what they meant about Zenobia Smith. Then as quickly as it had come, the flash was gone, and the other woman was only a sophisticated witch again, highly assimilated into the Muggle world.

"There is a saying, Miss Weasley. I wonder if you have ever heard it." Zenobia paused.

Ginny wanted to say that it was pretty hard to tell if she'd ever heard it if she didn't even know what it was, but she decided that it would show better judgment to just keep her mouth shut at that moment. If the gallery owner was thick enough to decide that she didn't like the sculpture series after all, then she could bite her head off to her heart's content.

"'If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, it will destroy you.'" Zenobia gave the clay maquettes another long, appraising look. "You have brought it forth."

Ginny waited. That _sounded_ like a good thing… sort of, anyway…

"It is everything that art can be," Zenobia said simply.

"So what does that mean?" Ginny felt rather dizzy suddenly.

"It means that this is your beginning. And that your talent will have no end." A faint smile curved up Zenobia's lips. "I really ought to have listened to my cousin; he wanted me to help you. He's taken a special interest of sorts. However, I don't care for those occasions when I think he's attempting to manipulate me in order to push along one of his little protégés. In all honesty, Miss Weasley, I believed you to be far too dependent on Draco Malfoy for my tastes. I don't like women who cling onto men."

"I don't cling," said Ginny.

"I know that now. Don't bristle. I'll arrange a special gallery showing on Friday, and I would advise you to be prepared for the melee that will follow."

Ginny wasn't quite sure if she could picture an artistic melee, and it seemed rather hard to believe that her work could possibly be at the center of it. But then, when she looked at her statues again, she could easily imagine them at the center of anything, or everything. "Who's your cousin?" she asked.

"Ah, that would be telling too much." The smile became secretive. "I think that you'll find out for yourself, one day."

"Will he be here? At the art showing?"

"Oh, no." Zenobia dismissed the possibility with a wave of her perfectly manicured hand. "Nick's always exercised his influence in the art world, but he doesn't care for these sorts of things."

"Nick? That's his name?"

"He has many names," said Zenobia. "Friday at eight o'clock, Miss Weasley. And don't be fashionably late. I can't endure that."

Ginny meant to prepare really, really well for the art opening. She really did. But somehow she wanted to finish the sketches for the series, and then there were a few drawings in pastels, and Luna could hardly keep her from sneaking back into Bas-Bleu and working on the sculpture series some more, especially after she'd woken up in a cold sweat for the nineteenth time in a row from that recurring nightmare about every piece of art in the entire gallery coming to life and laughing scornfully at her.

It all kept her lifted above the disturbing dreams about Draco Malfoy that almost _almost_ kept breaking into her consciousness every night. She could never see anything clearly, and she never knew what was going on; there was only his bright head, and his brooding face, and his burning silver eyes. And he was always, always turned away from her.

So what with one thing and another, Ginny was moodily chewing on a piece of completely burnt toast Friday morning when Luna held two floppy wisps of spiderweb under nose.

"Which one do you think I ought to wear?" she asked.

"To what? A Halloween party? Isn't it a bit early?"

"The art opening. What are _you_ going to wear? Perhaps we could coordinate outfits."

Ginny jumped up as if hit by a thousand Stinging hexes. "Oh—my- _gods_- I forgot all about it! Tonight, it's tonight! What do I do, what do I do?"

"Of course I don't pretend to know much about fashion. But I can't help thinking that it_ might_ be best to begin by wearing something other than that, you know," Luna said mildly, looking at Ginny's frayed orange pyjamas that had once belonged to Ron. She generally turned the cuffs up about ten times, and they still tended to get caught on her toes.

Ginny ran to the closet and began throwing items of clothing out at random, groaning louder as she saw each boring, drab, or downright raggedy one.

"Are you all right?" asked Luna, popping her head in the door.

"_No!_ Forget about an art opening- I couldn't wear any of these for a trip to the dump! Oh, Luna, what am I going to do?" wailed Ginny. "I need… I don't know… a fairy godmother or something; that's my only hope?"

Colin Creevey's head appeared above Luna's. "You rang?"

He tsk-tsked at the pile of discarded clothing. "Love, you really _do_ need a magic wand, don't you? Luckily, I have one. But I'm not sure even that's going to do the trick." He poked at a floppy peach dress dubiously. "Did you say you were going to an art opening tonight?"

"Yes. A pretty exclusive one, I think."

"Oh, God. Let's burn all these clothes right now. You might as well go with a rubbish bag on. Whose is it?"

"Um… mine."

"Good for you! But I hope you're ready, at least. You _are_ ready, aren't you? You _did_ do everything you're supposed to do?"

"Uh—"

"You created a master contact list three months ago, right? You sent your press release? You hung your posters?"

"Um—"

"You've alerted la crème de crème of the art world, of course? You've created a buzz? You've established excitement? You've finalized your guest list, and you've hired the best security to keep out the madding crowd?"

"Er—"

"Tell me that at _least_ you don't have toad-in-the-hole on your catering menu."

Ginny took a deep breath. "Uh… Colin, I haven't done a thing." She waited a moment, and then grew anxious at the lack of a reply. "Colin?"

"Please tell me I didn't just hear what I thought I heard," he said in a very faint voice.

"You did. I just said that I hadn't done a—"

"That was a figure of speech!" groaned Colin. "Maybe you really should show up with a rubbish can over your head. It would create some sort of buzz, anyway. Maybe we both should. Maybe we should dig a hole and crawl into it. Maybe—"

Ginny decided that enough was enough. "Don't you think you're being just a bit of a drama queen? Wouldn't Zenobia have said something if she really expected me to do—"

"Zenobia? Zenobia _Smith_?"

"Yes. It's at Bas-Bleu Gallery."

His brown eyes grew round as saucers. "_You_ snagged an opening night _there_? What the hell did you do with Zenobia to manage that one? I didn't think you swung that way, Gin-girl."

She glared at him. "I do have talent, I'll have you know! I finished a whole group of new pieces, and she loves them. That's why she arranged this opening."

He gave her a long, odd look, and then shrugged. "All I can say then, Gin, is that we'd better find you a positively whorish dress."

"With what money?"

Colin grinned. "All the filthy lucre you'll be rolling in after this art opening. Until then, that can't possibly be enough time for MistressCard to catch up with you."

Several hours later, all Ginny could think was that she sincerely hoped Colin was right. If he wasn't, she probably really _would_ have to work as a companion at the Crystal Palace for a good long time to pay off her debt for the black dress currently hanging in her closet. She collapsed across the narrow bed in the art studio with a sigh of exhaustion. Colin had bullied her into a pre-art-opening nap after much grumbling on her part, but she had to admit that she did need one rather desperately after all the frantic shopping. She could feel herself drifting off into sleep almost before her face was pressed into the pillow. _Peaceful, dreamless sleep,_ she thought drowsily. _Positively Draco Malfoy-free._

But it wasn't.  
_  
He stood on a stone balcony, staring bitterly into a warm May night. It wasn't the same balcony as the one outside the villa on Vendetta Island, the one she'd glimpsed through the bedroom window; Ginny knew that somehow. He had moved on. Draco Malfoy was running, running from one place to the next, fleeing his own footsteps, trying desperately to escape—what? He turned slightly._

"Go away," he said. "I don't want you here. I've told you that."

Oh, gods, he's talking to Astoria, thought Ginny. I just lay down for a nice, refreshing nap, and I got sucked into this. Why the hell can't I let go of him completely; why can't he stop haunting me when I least expect it, least want it? I'll never have him now, so why can't I just forget him, the way he's surely forgotten me?

But he wasn't talking to Astoria. She wasn't the one standing across from him. Ginny saw that now, because her perspective had shifted slightly, as if she saw what Draco was seeing as he looked at the other person on the balcony. He was tall and thin, with silvery hair and gray eyes, a lean, sculpted face that seemed to wear a perpetually amused expression, and long, graceful hands. He looked so much like Draco, and yet he didn't at all, and Ginny couldn't stop trying to puzzle out the similarities and the unfathomable differences. He lifted a little cup of espresso to his lips. Ginny saw that all of his fingers were the same length.

Loki! Oh, I should've known.

"Oh, no, I'm not going anywhere," said the trickster god. "The intricacies of this situation are far too amusing. You've really got yourself into a trap, little cousin. She can't be sent to France, and she can't be sent to Italy. She can't go to Germany, she can't go to Sweden, she can't go to Asia, Australia's right out, the Navajo Nation was at least a possibility but they've just refused as I understand it, and really, she'd have to stay on the planet…"

Draco glared at him. Loki conjured up a small globe in the air and spun it between his fingers. "Hmm. Somehow, I doubt that Antarctica is going to work. She'll just have to stay where she is." He winked. "And you know what that will mean, don't you, Draco?"

"I'm not discussing this with you. That's what it means," said Draco, his voice utterly flat.

"Oh, don't try that tall-pale-and-menacing act with me," yawned Loki. "Although it's dead sexy, I will say. Really, Draco, this is becoming tiresome. It's time to lay our cards on the table, don't you think?" To illustrate his point, he waved one hand in the air and a card table hovered in front of him. With a flick of one finger, a poker hand spread itself out on the surface.

"This is becoming tiresome, all right," said Draco. "I've had about enough of it. I'm going inside, and you can just—"

"Oh, come come. Listen. You can have what you want," said Loki, pushing Draco down gently into a chair at the table. "All you have to do is to succumb to the inevitable, which you're going to have to do sooner or later anyway—that's why they call it the inevitable, you know. You have a winning hand. It's very silly of you to refuse to play it." He smiled, and Ginny shivered at the beauty of the Immortal's face wreathed in a smile. But there's something wrong with it, too, she thought. It's not like Draco's face when he smiles. What is it… I can't quite put my finger on it…

Loki leaned forward to whisper into Draco's ear. "Give in, little cousin. Ginny wants you just as much as you want her. She's ready for you, ripe, like a perfect piece of fruit waiting to fall into your hand. How long are you going to let her wait?"

Draco shut his eyes tightly. "Go away," he said again, but his voice sounded weaker than it had before, Ginny thought.

"How long do you think that she _**is**__ going to wait?" Loki's voice was smoother now, like dark honey flowing through a river of cream. "I'll tell you a secret, Draco. She's desperate for it, even more than you know. She's had to wait too long, and that's about to backfire, because you've awakened her now. You've given her a taste, and she wants the whole apple. If you don't satisfy Ginny's craving soon, someone else will."_

"You're the devil," said Draco.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious. But think about it. You know perfectly well that I'm right. The Devil knows these things, you see. She's innocent now; she's untouched now, but how long do you really think that's going to last? You're gone, you've given her up, she knows she'll never see you again, and finally… well, nobody remains innocent forever..."

Draco turned slowly, his eyes blazing silver. "Get out," he said in the utterly dead, flat voice. "You've got to leave when I give you the order, Loki."

"Fine!" The Immortal threw up his hands. "I know when I'm not wanted. But still, Draco, it's rather a disturbing image, don't you think?" He sipped at his coffee and folded up the card table.

"I don't know what you mean," said Draco.

"Nothing, nothing," said Loki. "Only… Ginny's first time. But not with you. Another man stealing what you considered yours, what you could have had, what she would have given to you willingly. She's lying in someone else's arms, moaning someone else's name. Ick. I wouldn't care for it. But you're so noble these days; who's to say? Maybe you don't mind a bit."

"That's it," said Draco, in a voice that was almost pleasant. He made a sudden, savage move upwards, his hands outstretched towards Loki's throat.

"Ah, ah," said the Immortal, holding Draco off the ground. "Well, don't think that this hasn't been a little slice of heaven, because it hasn't. See you later, cousin."

He vanished abruptly, and Draco fell to the ground, the poker hand scattering over his head. He brushed the cards away, and then gave a harsh laugh. Each one was the ace of spades.  
  
"What are you _doing_ still in _bed_?" yelped an irritated voice.

"Get up, get up, get up!" added another.

Ginny gasped, her eyes snapping open. "Seven p.m., and you'd best get your lazy behind out of bed, silly girl," the bedside clock informed her. Colin's anxious face hovered her, now joined by Tony Goldstein's, she saw. Luna was holding out the dress, and a little bag of makeup sat on the table.

Colin bent down to her. "Gin, I mean this in the nicest possible way, and please do take into account our many years of wonderful friendship, but it really is time for you to move your freckled arse now."

He was right. She groaned and pushed aside the covers. Life wouldn't wait for perfectly mad dreams about Draco Malfoy, whether she wanted it to or not. _And really,_ she thought, _it's best if it doesn't. It would be best if I never had them again._

Luckily, there were at least some distractions.

"Luna," she said, "I... um... respect your artistic tastes and everything, but I really don't think that turquoise,lime green, and hot pink eyeshadow are going to go too well together. Especially not with that orange hair ribbon. "


	37. Ginny's Unexpected Encounter

A/N: Thanks to all the readers.

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"Now, remember, Ginny, you're not supposed to spend all your time talking to the people you already know!" hissed Colin.

"It's true," agreed Tony. "You're not."

"You're supposed to work the room, so remember that and start just as soon as we get in there. You're supposed to make contacts. Meet and greet."

"It's true." Tony nodded. "You are."

"You're _not_ supposed to stand glued to the catering table and try to drink your way to the bottom of the white Zinfandel, especially when you know that your tolerance level is about one-half teaspoon."

"That's true. You're—"

"Shut up!" snapped Ginny. "I never have more than one glass, I'll have you know." This was perhaps just the slightest bit of artistic exaggeration, but then, as she reminded herself, she was an artist. She'd earned the right to it.

"I suppose you'd be right, _if_ we were talking about a glass the size of the shark aquarium at the Brighton Zoo," said Colin.

She glared at him. "I might need to relax. A bit of wine might help."

"You can't relax," said Colin. "You're going to be on display. You'll be the center of attention, Gin. You can't exactly stand there and guzzle litres of white Zinfandel until you're thoroughly pissed and about to pass out, you know."

"Ooh—" Her fists clenched. A black-clad man with manicured nails and a monocle in one eye was sauntering past the velvet rope and into the front door of the gallery. He stopped and stared at her in apparent alarm, whispering to his two bony, non-breasted female companions, both of whom wore the sort of blousy empire-waisted dresses that Ginny had always known made her look about nineteen months pregnant.

"That's Capote Killingsworth," Tony whispered frantically in her ear. "He's a _terribly_ influential art critic. You've got to make an amazingly good impression on him, Ginny, or you might as well start sharpening your pencil to draw ten-minute portraits at county fairs straightaway."

Ginny dropped her hands to her sides immediately. A large group of glossy people passed them on their way into the studio, giggling and chatting.

"Darling, I've even never _heard_ of this artist before. Jenny Wesley, did you say? The name sounds horribly common."

"She's one of Zenobia's little protégés, I suppose."

A tinkle of laughter.

"Well, is there anything amusing to attend after we've put in the obligatory ten minutes here?"

"Cheer up. Zen's wine list can be rather good."

"I doubt it. Nothing but white Zinfandel; what would you wager?"

Ginny sagged against the brick wall, her stomach churning. "I can't go in there," she whispered.

"It's eight o'five," said Tony. "You've got to go in. You don't know what Zenobia's like with tardy artists. I've heard that she's been known to kill and eat them just to prove a point. I mean, she does like you, so I doubt she'd go quite that far, but she does have a way of making you feel really, really bad when she asks you if you actually own a watch—"

"Look, is there some other way in?" Ginny interrupted. "Just so that I could avoid this crowd?"

"There's the back door, but I don't think that will be an improvement," Tony said dubiously. "It's absolutely infested with gatecrashers."

"Tony, come on," she pleaded. "There's got to be something else. How about a side door?"

"I suppose it's possible," he said slowly. "But Ginny, I don't think it's a very good idea to _try_ to find one."

"What do you mean?" she asked impatiently. It was getting closer and closer to ten minutes after eight all the time.

"I've worked at this gallery for over a year, and it can be a very strange place. I've seen storage rooms appear and disappear, stained glass windows turn into blank walls and back again, and there used to be a corridor that didn't lead anywhere in particular… one day it was simply gone…" Tony shook his head.

"That sounds rather like Hogwarts."

"Yes, but this is different. I'm not even sure I can say how. We're supposed to be in Muggle London, for one thing, so none of this should be happening. But it also _feels_ different. Whenever I see things changing around here, I've learned not to notice, not to quite see them, because it just feels safer, somehow. Ginny, what are you looking at?"

She was craning her head round the side the building. "I clearly see a side door, Tony."

"It wasn't there before. That's a distinctly bad sign. You've got to stay away. Are you listening to me?"

"No."

He sighed. "Just wait a moment, and we'll both take you in the front, once this group goes through—Colin? Where did he go?" Tony glanced round.

"Fuck," gasped Colin, tearing round the corner. "Fuck, fuckity fuck fuck!"

"Something's wrong?" asked Tony.

"Yes, you could say that! Rita Skeeter's here!"

Tony groaned. "Shite, of all the things we don't need to deal with right now—"

"It gets worse," Colin said grimly.

"It always does, when she's involved."

"This isn't funny, Tony! She says she's got Harry Potter with her, and—Ginny, where are you _going_?"

Unfortunately, it was too late to catch her, and by the time they had reached the side of the building, the door had disappeared.

"Is she always like this?" Tony asked Colin.

"Yes."

"It must make her rather difficult to live with."

"It's a good thing that I don't live with her, then," said Colin. "But she's something, Ginny Weasley." He stuck his hands in his pockets. "There are so many things I could say about her, but the one that sums it all up the best is that there are moments when she really makes me wish I wasn't bent."

"Oh," said Tony. "Well. I suppose we'd better get back to the gallery, then. We'll need to explain to Zen that Ginny's managed to get herself lost in some alternate reality or other."

"Is something wrong?"

"No. Let's get going."

"You know, I've always thought that 'his face fell' was only an expression," mused Colin, "but I think that yours actually _has_. Is there any particular reason?"

"None, really. Except that I was wondering something, a bit. If you've got yearning-to-be-straight moments on Ginny Weasley's account every now and then, well, how does the bent state strike you the rest of the time?"

"I'm happy with it."

"Really? How happy?"

"Quite." Colin put his hand over Tony's. "Very, very much, sometimes."

"Is this one of those times?"

"Mm-him." He leaned towards the other boy, and their lips met in a soft, sweet, tender kiss.

Behind the side door, a tall, silvery-haired Immortal with grey eyes watched the pair, a smirk on his impossibly beautiful face. "Ah, young love," he sighed. "It's so touching. And their path will be so smooth and easy. I won't bother them the least bit. Draco Malfoy and Ginny Weasley, on the other hand…" The smirk widened, and became impossibly devilish. But that was, after all, appropriate enough.

Ginny breathed a sigh of relief as soon as the door closed behind her. She was standing in a large, wide, well-lit corridor, and when she stood very still and listened, she was sure she could hear the faint hum of voices. It would obviously be extremely easy to find her way to the gallery.

She remained sure of this for a remarkably long time. Later, she thought that the signs were what had fooled her. They'd looked so _official_.

_Storage Room A._ _Gallery B—Closed for Renovations. Janitor's Closet. Please Take Stairs: Elevator Out Of Order._ Once, she'd even found a very nice loo, where she'd brushed her hair and freshened her makeup. Another time, she'd munched from a small snack table spread with an assortment of cheese and crackers, and picked up a filled glass of white zinfandel. She sipped at it as she walked. She still heard the hum of voices, and the lights and signs and pleasant smell of lemons were all very reassuring.

But then everything began to go wrong.

_Dragon Display Closed for Refurbishing. June 7 Opening Party Unavoidably Rescheduled for November._

_That was Draco's birthday,_ she thought, continuing to walk. _Yesterday. Oh, gods, yesterday. I suppose I shoved it underneath everything, somehow. I wonder what sort of opening party it is, though? And why was it rescheduled?_

The corridor took a sudden turn, and Ginny almost stumbled, because it had narrowed. The lighting was growing dimmer and dimmer, too. Both changes had begun so subtly that she couldn't even have said when they started. She peered up at a sign on the wall.

_Guinevere's Body of Work Closed for the Present. Initiation Will Take Place On or About December 1st._

A chill swept over Ginny. _How could a body of work would be initiated?_ she wondered. _That doesn't sound right. And-_ She blinked. The walls had been painted a soothing white all along. They were covered with dark red wallpaper now. How could she ever have thought that the lights were smooth and even and bright? The sconces cast pools of orange on the wooden floor, each separated by sinister darkness.

Ginny breathed deeply. She'd taken a wrong turn somehow. That was all. She walked briskly forward, but she couldn't seem to get anywhere; the corridors kept turning and twisting every time she was sure she heard the distant hum of voices again, and finally the hall ended, boxing her into a corner. She looked around wildly. She was completely surrounded by dark wooden doors on all sides, each furnished with an old-fashioned, ornate lock below its doorknob. The chills swept over her skin regularly now, one after another, and she couldn't hide the truth from herself anymore.

She'd seen this corridor before. Obfirmo, the Malfoy lock, had let her into the vault at Gringotts, and she had somehow ended up here. She'd stood here, perhaps even in the very same spot. She'd watched Draco dangle Astoria over a bottomless pit of his own making, coming within a hair's breadth of dropping her. He'd only stopped when he'd seen her horrified face, and she could never know for sure if he would have let Astoria fall otherwise. One night later, she'd dreamed of opening Draco's chest and finding this place in his heart. And whatever it really was, wherever it could possibly be, she had entered it again.

_You've got to stay away, Tony said. I didn't listen to him._

"This is all my fault," she said aloud.

A door opened. "Well, I'd say that _someone's_ got to be responsible," said an irritated voice, and Daphne Greengrass stepped into the corridor.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Ginny exclaimed.

"Chasing Dean Thomas about like a damn fool," snapped Daphne. "This never would have happened if he'd only stay in one place."

"Dean?" Ginny was starting to feel dizzier by the second.

"Yes, Dean. I tried to tell him that I've got to talk to him, because he might have some desperately important information that I've got to learn, and he only gave me one of those infuriatingly superior looks of his and told me that he didn't think we had anything more to say to each other than we ever had at school—"

"Wait, wait, wait. What would Dean Thomas know, and why would _you_ have to know it?"

"It's something to do with St. Mungo's, of course, at the ward where he works," Daphne said impatiently. "It's somehow involved with the terrible thing that's coming. I'm not quite sure how he's connected with the death, but he's in deep—"

"Daphne!" Ginny grabbed the other woman by her perfectly manicured hands. "Listen to me. You sound like you're absolutely mad. What the fuck's going on?"

A look of confusion came over the flawlessly made-up face. "I don't know. I was walking across the gallery, and I saw Dean go through a sort of side door, and I followed him… I'm not quite sure what happened after that. It all looked quite normal at first, and then things began to go a bit queer." She looked around her. "Ginny, where are we?"

"I don't have any more idea than you do. But listen, Daphne, we've got to find Dean—we've got to find out what's going on, and I have to tell you something. I had a—" Ginny gulped.

"There he is," said Daphne. "I saw him." She turned back to the door she'd come through, which was still ajar.

Ginny plucked at her sleeve. "No, Daphne, _wait._ This could be important. It was a dream, or at least I think it was, and Draco was talking about Astoria, or at least I _think_ he was, and he said—"

She was talking to empty air. Daphne had vanished, and the door was closed. Ginny rattled at the doorknob without success. She was alone in the corridor again.

She tried to walk the other way, but the floor seemed to turn under her feet and send her back each time she tried. Then she made the rounds of the doors rather grimly, trying each knob. Every one was locked. She slid down to the floor, trying not to cry. She could still hear the soft, faraway murmur of voices. How was that possible, when she had to be a million miles from anywhere? If she craned her ears, she was positive that she could almost hear what they said, or at least catch a few words. _These sculptures. Those statues. That sketch. Mm-hm. Mumble. Psst bz bz bzz…_ They were talking about her art, she was sure o it.

And it was almost as if she could hear the art itself calling out to her, all the pieces she'd crafted, their voices as sad as lost children longing for reunion. _As sad as…_

_Go away," he said. "I don't want you here. I've told you that."_

_No. No! I swore I wasn't going to go over that again!_

But she had no choice now. There was nothing to distract her. Only the dim corridor, and the silent doors, and the terrible, creeping fear. Even thinking about Draco Malfoy was better than that.

_He shut his eyes, and you saw the pain on his face,_ her treacherous mind whispered to her. _Go away, he said again, but oh, how weak he sounded then. You're the Devil, he said. And he was being tempted by the Devil, wasn't he? That's who Loki is._

_I don't know if anything about that dream was real at all! I probably wasn't even seeing anything that I didn't make up out of my own head-_

_What a load of shite,_ her mind said impatiently. _Don't lie to yourself, Ginny. At least don't do that. You saw what Draco saw, and you know it._

_All right—fine—well, then I saw a dream that Draco had. That's all it was. He knows that we can never be together, just as I do. But he's a man, so if the Devil tempts him by dangling memories of me in front of his nose, he'll want me again—but only for sex. It's hardly shocking news. That's what happened with the Succubus spell, after all. I was naked in his bed and he'd just had his hands all over me, so he gave in to temptation. No more than that. If I'd given in too, then it finally would have happened. We would have-_ Her thoughts trembled, and she stopped.

_Yes, you would have,_ her mind said slyly. _Right then and there, in his bed, if you'd only succumbed, if you'd only said yes, as you so desperately wanted to do. Just think of everything you could have had, Ginny-_

_Stop changing the subject! The point is, that dream didn't mean a thing._

_Oh, didn't it?_ her mind whispered. _Remember what you saw, Ginny. Remember what you heard. Remember how Draco lost all control at the end, when Loki told him that you'd betray him with some other man, that your first time could never be his. Remember his face when Loki said that._

_I'd hardly be betraying him! He was the one who left me! He told me he was marrying Astoria, and that he could never come back to me. Then I came to him like a fool on Vendetta Island, and I finally found the strength to leave him… I did… and he let me go. I'm a free agent now. I can choose someone else. I can… of course I can… oh fuck…_ Ginny remembered Draco's face, all right.

She couldn't keep doing this. She'd let go of Draco Malfoy once and for all because she knew that she could never have him, and finally, he'd let go of her. There was no reason why she shouldn't sleep with someone else now, no reason at all. She _should_ do it, really.

"I can't do it," she whispered with a sort of horror. "I _couldn't_ shag someone else first."

Dean burst through the door, slamming it behind him. His face was furious. "Fuck-all do I care whether you do or not! Tell Daphne Greengrass to stay the hell away from me. She's some sort of friend of yours, isn't she? She'd listen to you, wouldn't she?"

"That's it," moaned Ginny. "I've finally gone mad."

"You can't," said Dean, grabbing her shoulders and looking at her with wild eyes. "You're the only sane one here. Listen, you've got to listen. She kept following me round the gallery and her red lips were bothering me and I found a side door that hadn't been there before and I slipped out of it, and I thought I'd get away from her, but then the corridors began to go all queer—"

"That happened to you, too?" she gasped.

"Yes! Yes." Dean hugged her in relief. "I told you that you weren't mad, Ginny, and I suppose that means that I'm not either. The signs were quite normal at first, but then they all began to say something about a hidden St. Mungo's exhibit that would open for private showings only in November, very exclusive, available to members only. Then the lights dimmed, and when I looked behind me, Daphne was following, yelling something about Malfoys and the hidden ward, and I couldn't shake her, Ginny, I couldn't escape her no matter how fast I ran!" He shuddered convulsively.

He was still holding her, and Ginny closed her eyes for a moment, leaning into his warmth. It steadied her to feel _some_ sort of human contact, to hear a heartbeat and breathing; Dean's solidity brought her back to reality, somehow. Their foreheads touched, and he sighed after a few moments.

"Where the hell are we, Ginny?"

"Someplace…" She hesitated. Dean was her friend, but there had been an awkwardness between them ever since her fifth year. Too many things were left unsaid; she knew that she had used him to get to Harry, she had never forgiven herself for it, and she had never been quite sure what he had felt about it, or what he really thought of her now. She couldn't tell him what she knew about this place, much less what she suspected.

"Someplace very strange," she finished lamely. "I really don't know how we ended up here, but I think we both must have gone through the same side door. Daphne did too, but she disappeared, and I haven't seen her since."

Dean's eyebrows drew together. "Well, how are we supposed to get out?"

"I was hoping that you had a few ideas in that direction," Ginny admitted. "I've tried to go down that corridor loads of times, but it just keeps turning round, and I always end up back here."

"But there are two of us now... I wonder…" Dean frowned. "Maybe there really is a way out. I mean, it's like a hall of mirrors, and the way that you keep ending up back here is only because you're confused by a sort of illusion the whole time. What if I go first, and you keep an eye on me? That way, if you see me coming back towards you, then you can head in the other direction., because you'll _know_ that's the right one."

There was something about that idea that wasn't very good, but Ginny couldn't put her finger on it, and there certainly didn't seem to be any better options at the moment. "All right," she said.

"Keep your eye on me, Ginny," said Dean, and he started walking away.

As soon as he moved away from her, and she no longer felt the warmth of his body or the touch of his hand, Ginny knew exactly what was wrong with the idea. It was too bad, she thought objectively, because it was probably a very good one otherwise. The problem was that this place existed outside of any sort of normal human experience, and so the human mind could not survive intact in it. She'd noticed exactly the same thing the time she'd been in here before by herself, Ginny now realized. She'd got lost and she'd become more and more frantic, more desperate and disoriented. But then she'd seen Draco and Astoria, and her bond with him had been strong enough to protect her from the inhuman effects. She had been with Draco in the dream, too. But now, Dean had disappeared from view, and she was all alone.

_I'm about to go completely insane,_ she thought.

She couldn't stand around waiting for Dean to return. Her only hope was to find him. She began to run down the corridor, gritting her teeth when she saw that all the doorknobs were laughing merrily at her. "Have the common decency to stay where you're put," she snarled at the carpet, and surprisingly enough, it did. The hall opened out into an expanded space, and the walls stretched out before her as she frantically ran towards them. _Dean._ She saw Dean. He was trying to reach her, too, his hands outstretched, but it was too late; she already knew that it would be too late. She ran into his arms, sobbing with defeat.

"It's too late," she cried, kneeling on the floor.

"Yeah, I think you're right," he sighed.

Ginny looked up at him sadly. "You didn't touch me in time. I've gone mad."

"Do you think so?" he asked thoughtfully.

She cocked her head to one side, considering. "A bit, at least. Nothing seems exactly right. Quite odd things seem entirely reasonable."

"I think I know what you mean," agreed Dean.

"But I'm very glad you're here," said Ginny.

"Oh, so am I," agreed Dean.

"It's awfully nice to have a friend about at a time like this."

"I agree," agreed Dean.

He did look very agreeable, she thought. His skin was such a lovely color, like hot chocolate with loads of real cream in it. Just a bit darker than Blaise Zabini. She yawned.

"I don't know why I'm so tired all of a sudden," she said.

"I don't know, but I am as well. I wish we could lie down for a bit," he said.

"Oh, so do I," said Ginny, swaying where she stood. She was so thoroughly exhausted that she began to slip to the floor, and Dean couldn't catch her in time. Luckily, a bed had appeared below them out of thin air, and Ginny fell into a soft white comforter.

"Mmm," she said drowsily, repositioning herself so that her head was wedged between huge comfortable pillows. "I'm _so_ glad you're here, Dean. You're such a good friend to me. Like one of my brothers."

"Yes, Ginny," she heard Dean sigh, just as she drifted off into sleep. "I'm just like one of your brothers."

Ginny thought she felt him put his arm round her, which was rather odd, she thought, because she couldn't imagine any of her brothers wanting to do that. But she still snuggled against him, because he was warm and comforting, and because in her heart of hearts, she felt a guilt over the way she had treated him that would never leave her. Then she fell asleep.

_Draco sat as still as stone, staring straight ahead. The trickster god hovered at his elbow, whispering in his ear, his voice sweeter than the hiss of the snake who tempted Eve to fall in the garden._

"It's a one-time only offer, Draco. Good just for tonight. The coupon expires in the morning, and you can never redeem it again."

Draco said nothing.

"You could think of it as a sort of Incubus spell," Loki said in a wheedling voice. "It's really remarkably similar. The Pureblood Marriage Bond wouldn't apply. Astoria would never know. Ginny couldn't be hurt by it. Doesn't it sound like a good idea?"

Silence.

"Draco, Draco. If you bring forth what it within you, it will save you. If you do not bring it forth, it will destroy you."

Draco continued to stare straight ahead.

Loki sat back on his heels. "Damn. If I hadn't invented damnation already, I mean. Even mumbo-jumbo pseudo-mystic philosophy didn't work. Let's see…" He tapped his chin with a forefinger, the unnaturally glossy nail glistening in the faint light. "Oh! I know." He leaned a bit closer.

"How about if I tell you what Ginny Weasley was thinking a bit earlier tonight? As a bonus extra, I'll even throw in something she said."

Draco's lips compressed into a thin line.

"Oh, come on. Don't tell me you can resist that."

"I don't believe a word you're about to say," he said in a clipped voice. "You're the father of lies, after all."

"Well, we'll see about that," said Loki. "She was remembering everything she saw and heard in your dream last night, because she witnessed it, of course—oh, you didn't know that? Some of it seemed to upset her rather a lot. Is anything wrong?"

"No. You don't know how to do anything but lie. You're lying now."

"Yes yes, your opinion has been duly noted, Draco. Anyway, the part that seemed to bother Ginny in particular was when I speculated on the likelihood of her first full-scale sexual experience occurring with someone other than yourself, which you must admit did rather seem to upset you. I think she nearly cried. But then she overcompensated a bit in the other direction by telling herself that if she fulfilled my gloomy prediction, this would in no way constitute a betrayal of you—which does seem to make sense, seeing as how the two of you haven't exactly hammered out an agreement between yourselves regarding the deflowering of Ginny Weasley. Oh, don't' clench your jaw like that, Draco. You'll give yourself temporo-mandibular joint syndrome. Anyway, the worst part's yet to come, I'm afraid. She then pondered the theory that she really ought to engage in sexual congress with someone else first, as soon as possible, in fact—oh, Draco, don't wrinkle the material!"

Loki clucked his tongue and stepped back. Draco was sweating and panting heavily, but whatever contretemps had just occurred had clearly not ended well for him. The Immortal lifted him up from the floor between thumb and forefinger, shaking his head.

"Really, cousin, I wish you'd learn to control your youthful impetuosity and not shoot the messenger. Anyway, I'm not done. You haven't heard the last bit, which is what she actually said. But I'm a tad bit miffed with you, so you're going to have to ask me nicely if you want to hear it. Do you?"

Draco looked up at Loki, and his face was deadly pale. He nodded minutely.

"Let's hear the magic word," said Loki.

His mouth worked painfully, and his eyes squeezed shut. "Please." His voice was a broken whisper. Something in him had broken, Ginny realized. Some battle had finally been lost.

Loki smiled, as if offering a tremendous treat to a child. "'I can't. I couldn't shag anyone else first.'" He paused. "That's not what I'm saying, of course. That's what Ginny Weasley said. You know, I think she was talking about you." He waited. "Well?"

"Take me," said Draco.

Loki's smile widened. "I knew you'd see reason, cousin." He held out his hand, and Draco grasped it.

The Immortal turned his head then, so that he was no longer looking at Draco. His eyes twinkled, and they met Ginny's. But he wasn't really seeing her. He couldn't be. She was only watching some sort of confused dream that Draco was having; it could have nothing to do with her, not really-

"Oh, can't it?" said Loki. He winked.

Ginny's eyes opened slowly. She was staring right at one of the doors in the corridor, slightly shorter than the rest, with a more elaborate lock and a long golden key. She reached out and touched is, and then cried out in pain. A razor-sharp edge had pricked her finger, and several drops of blood flowed down to stain the pristine white bed. She sucked on her finger, still watching the door. _I don't know why. It's not as if anything is going to happen. All of those doors have just stayed locked all along-_

It swung open. Draco Malfoy stood in the doorway.

"_Ahhh,_" he said, in a one long, slow, intense breath.

He took a step towards her, his face filled with eager hunger, his arms reaching out, and then he stopped, frozen in place.

Ginny couldn't understand for a moment. Then she felt something warm and solid slung across her back, and she looked over at Dean. He was sleeping soundly next to her in the bed, and in the dead silence, he sighed softly and snuggled up more closely to her body so that they were pressed together as closely as any pair of true lovers could possibly have been.


	38. The Turning Point

A/N: Thanks to all readers… I hope that people are getting something out of this fic… but I have to be honest; there are reasons why I don't usually post on , and I'm being reminded of them lately. However, I'm going to keep posting until the fic is caught up.

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Draco and Ginny stared at each other, and stared, and stared, and stared.

"You came through that door," she finally said, stupidly.

He nodded.

"What were you going to do?" she asked.

"I was going to take you into that room, Ginny," he said.

"Why? We can't be with each other. You know it. So do I."

He swallowed convulsively. " Forget about that. Forget about all of it, everything that I said, and that you said—none of it matters. I thought that it did, but it doesn't. Just come away with me."

_But it does matter,_ thought Ginny. "What about Astoria? Are you really going to send her to France?"

"Astoria?" Draco said the name as if he'd forgotten that she even existed. _I wish I could,_ thought Ginny.

"You mean that you thought I meant—" He stopped.

Draco looked at Dean again. He still slept soundly, and Ginny was sure that he couldn't hear anything they were saying to each other. Irrelevantly, she remembered sitting on the bed in the room with the very young Draco in her dream at the cottage, the one who had cried in her arms. He _was_ the sixteen-year-old Draco in the portrait. She realized that now.

"The ties that bind me are too strong," he murmured. "I can't break them. I was a fool to think I could."

A strange, small sound filled the air, exactly as if an egg had been cracked open. Ginny glanced at the door that Draco had just walked through. _It sounds like it came from there._

"Did something just break?" she asked.

"Of course not," said Draco. He turned his gaze to Ginny, and it was mirror-bright. "It's just that you're not what I thought you were. That's all."

"What did you think I was?" asked Ginny.

Draco shut his lips into a thin line. The minutes dragged by, and he winced, finally doubling over and holding his head. "Oh, fuck," he gasped.

Ginny narrowed her eyes at him, and a thought came back to her. "You _have_ to tell the truth, don't you? It's something like _in vino veritas_, or a ghost portrait."

"Yes," Draco said, leaning against the wall as if exhausted.

"And you were hoping that I wouldn't figure it out, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"So what did you think I was?"

"I thought you were a sort of dream," he said tightly. "A dream of perfect purity. I thought that you'd make me pure, and that you were the only person or thing or thought who had the power to do it."

She wanted to laugh. "And what about now?"'

His mouth worked. "You're not pure. You can't purify me. I don't… I don't need you now." He paused, and then spoke in a rush. "You're no better than Marie ever was."

She leaned forward, examining his perfect features, now white with the pain he'd brought on himself by lying. "I'll never give you the chance to say anything like that to me, ever again," she said, more to herself than to him. Then she slapped him across his beautiful face with all her strength. "I hate you."

His face convulsed for just an instant, as if with unbearable agony. "That's a matter of supreme indifference to me."

"Get out," she said.

"With pleasure," he said, and he disappeared almost before he had finished speaking.

Ginny sat still as stone, staring ahead of her. She heard an amused chuckle from the corner. "This is all your fault," she said without turning.

"Ah, singing that same old mortal song again," said Loki. "Can't you ever accept any responsibility?"

"_What_ responsibility? I never would've said any of those things if it wasn't for you and your spells! Draco never would have done what he did. The whole thing wouldn't have been…" _Ruined. Broken. Wrecked beyond repair._

"So you're saying you'd prefer that it hadn't been?" Loki asked softly behind her. "Oh, Ginny."

Ginny closed her eyes. A world of memories and imagined sensations rushed over her.

"Just think, Gin-girl. You could have had Draco all to yourself for a few long,delicious hours. You could have learned just what you've wanted to know about what it's like to lie down with him and let him do everything to you that he so desperately craves, and to satisfy your own curiousity as well. Nothing forbidden, nothing held back… until morning, anyway. Then he'd be gone… just like that. No harm, no foul. Itch nicely scratched, tiresome no-sex curse trounced, but because of that handy-dandy Incubus spell, you'd be under no obligation whatsoever. Free as a bird." Loki snapped his fingers together, and a tiny white dove flew out from between them. He watched it fly about for a few moments until it pecked at his hand. He winced and swatted it. Ginny had been listening in a sort of daze, but she jumped back.

"Gone, just like that?" she repeated.

Loki rolled his eyes. "Trust _you_ to harp on that one little detail. Of course Draco would vamoose, your vanished virginity in tow—any delightful events which might take place here would be real, by the way, so I'd be surprised if you could _walk_ the next day."

"So Draco would be gone." _And everything that I've tried to be, everything that I could build for myself, everything that I know I am, or might become… that would be gone, too. I'd be right back to where I began._ In her mind's eye, she saw a butterfly flap its wings, falter, and fall into a chasm, never to emerge again.

"Is there an echo in here?"

_Draco said that too,_ she remembered. It seemed a lifetime ago when she had last heard him. "I want you to get out," she told Loki.

"I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard _that,_" sighed the trickster god. "Still, I suppose I should have expected it. Shall I provide the epilogues? I'm a rotten excuse for an Immortal, I've manipulated both of you unforgivably, I've ruined your lives, you don't understand why I would have done such a thing to my own cousin, you hate me hate me _hate_ me, boo hoo hoo, oh well, what else could you expect from the Devil, after all, now get out! Out out out! Is that it, or have I missed anything?" He gave her a bright smile.

"Yes, you have, actually," said Ginny. "I don't just want you to get out _now_." She chose her words carefully. "From this day forward, Loki, I order you to never interfere in my life again. I don't want to see or hear or meet you, and I also forbid you to go about reading my mind, spying, on me, or working behind the scenes in any way. From this day on, never again. Do you understand me?"

"Very well indeed," said Loki. His smile did not waver. "From this moment on, I will never have anything to do with you, Ginevra Molly Weasley. Oh, and would you like me to add Draco Malfoy on to that promise?"

"Yes," said Ginny. "And I know that you have to do what I order you to do. So don't try to trick me."

"I wouldn't dream of it. At no point in the future will I ever interfere in either of your lives, ever again. Cross my heart and hope to die."

"Why are you still smiling?"

"Oh, a smile is just a frown turned upside down," said Loki. "Goodbye, Ginny. My work is done." He shook her hand graciously. "In the future, we will never meet again. That's a promise, and you know that no Immortal can lie. Not even me. "

He began to dissolve into mist, growing more and more insubstantial as she watched, and he seemed to take forever to disappear. His smile vanished last.

Beside her, Dean stirred and sat up. That was when she finally began to cry, and he held her and made comforting little noises and looked truly horrified when she tearfully asked him if anything had happened between them that she didn't know about.

"_Of course_ nothing's happened. Do you seriously think I would- Ginny, can't you stop _crying_- what sort of person do you think I am?" He put her back from him and looked indignant and she hung her head, feeling ashamed.

Dean always did seemed to have that effect on her. _I've always failed him,_ she thought drearily. And anyway, she should have known that he couldn't possibly have done anything to her, because Loki had told her that if she _had_ gone through with it, then Draco would have been her first - _No. I'll never think about that again._

"I didn't mean it that way," she mumbled, shoving back the white comforter and looking around her fearfully. "Dean, I have to get out of here. I can't stay here another second."

"But I still don't know how we can," he said.

"We have to," said Ginny, struggling to her feet. "There's got to be a way!"

"Of course there is," said Luna, coming round a corner. "Although I don't know if we should go back _just_ yet. I'm trying to avoid Rita Skeeter, because she sort of chased me all round the buffet table and backed me up against the wall right between the ham pithivers and the cheese timbale. Luckily, I found a side door. Hello, Dean."

"Oh shite, now you're trapped in here too!" exclaimed Ginny.

"Your hair's dreadfully tangled, Ginny," observed Luna. She took a small comb out of her purse. "You'll want it to look tidy for the photographers. There do seem to be quite a few of them."

"I don't care how many there are! It doesn't matter anyway, because we're never getting out of here, and neither are you! _Ow!_ You're ripping my hair out by the roots."

"She seems a bit upset," Luna said mildly to Dean, pulling through the snarls in Ginny's disheveled hair.

"Of course I'm upset," said Ginny, wincing with pain. "Not only are we trapped here with no hope of ever getting out, but that poisonous Skeeter bitch has Harry with her! Maybe we shouldn't even _try_ to get back."

"Oh no, Harry isn't here. Just one more snarl. There we go." Luna gave Ginny's hair a final pat.

"What do you mean? That's what Colin said."

"I think he was perhaps a bit confused," mused Luna. "Rita Skeeter was trying to _find_ Harry. Her theory seems to be that your love for him was the inspiration for your great work of art, and that the two of you will announce your engagement when the statues are unveiled. That's why she's so sure he's there now."

"That's it," said Ginny. "I'm strangling Colin to death with my bare hands. Or—no, I'm not, because we're never getting out of here."

"I must admit, I'm rather worried about that myself," said Dean. "Our attempts haven't been very successful so far."

"We'll take a left turn, then a right, then another right, and we ought to be back in the main gallery again," said Luna.

"No, we won't!" said Ginny. "We'll wander around in this corridor for the rest of our lives!" _And I'll go mad. Oh gods, but I hope it happens soon._

"It'll be fine," Luna said serenely. "I know all about these side doors, you see." She held up a tiny something that gleamed very faintly in the orange light. "This is exactly why I always carry a spool of thread. We'll simply follow it to the other end, and then we'll be back in the gallery."

The three of them walked very slowly down the corridor, Luna winding up the thread all the while. It was growing wider already, Ginny saw.

"I talked to Blaise, you know," Luna said to her. "Do you think that was a good idea?"

"I think so," said Ginny. "If you wanted to."

"Yes, on the whole I think I did. I was terribly upset with him at first because he had some girl or other clinging to his arm and I thought it might take a _spatula_ to get her off, but then he found me crying in the ladies' loo and explained that he was only trying to make me jealous. Then we kissed. It was ever so nice." Luna looked rather dreamy. "He wants me to go home with him. He said there needn't be any sex involved. Do you think that would work?"

"Um… I really don't know, Luna," said Ginny. The dim orange light was growing both brighter and paler in color.

"He said that we could talk all night long, and then we could fall asleep in each other's arms, and that would be the very first time that ever happened to him. Spending the night with anyone at all since the age of thirteen and a half without having some sort of sex, I mean. Male, female, or… well, with some sorts of house-elves, I think it's rather difficult to say. But Blaise said he'd do it for me. That's quite sweet, don't you think? It does seem as if he really cares. I didn't think he _could._"

Ginny closed her eyes. Draco Malfoy's face was still burned into the back of them, and she wondered if she would always see it.

"Something's wrong, isn't it?" Luna asked sadly. "I'm being so dreadfully insensitive in my happiness, aren't I?"

"No, Luna." Ginny reached out and put her hand over the other girl's fingers. "Be happy, please, you and Blaise. Happy enough for both of us."

Behind one of the closed doors, Loki and Zenobia watched the three mortals walk closer and closer to the real world. The trickster god had a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

"Damn you for doing that," muttered Zenobia.

"Bit late for damnation, I would say," said Loki.

"You've gone too far. You always do. But this time…" She turned on him, eyes flashing. "You stay out of it from now on. Leave them all alone."

Loki shrugged and gave her an innocent look. "I've already sworn that I would."

"Then why are you smirking like that?"

"No reason at all," said Loki. "Nope. None whatsoever. I'm adopting a strictly hands-off policy when it comes to Draco Malfoy and Ginny Weasley from now on."

"You'd better do the same for all their friends. Family too."

"Scout's honor," said Loki, holding up a hand. "You don't trust me to let them strictly alone from this day on, do you? That hurts, Zen. It really does."

"Of course I don't trust you half as far as the Archangel Michael threw you from heaven," said Zenobia. "You're hardly called the Father of Lies for nothing."

"Come come. When has one of my promises ever gone wrong?"

"Do you have a few eons to hear about it?"

"Oh, well. If you're going to be like that."

She glared at him. "I've got a gallery opening to get back to, if you don't mind. _Some_ of us are trying to pass for mortals."

"I've said it before and I'll say it again; I don't know why you insist on spending all eternity slumming, Zen," he said idly.

She threw him one last black look and then stomped towards the gallery.

After she had gone, he allowed himself a small chuckle. "I _do_ so love playing with mortals," he said contentedly. "Such amusing creatures." He spun an iridescent spider web between his fingers and idly toyed with several tiny figures in it. While they were far too small to see in any detail, red-gold hair glinted from a single head, the flash of ashy silver from at least one other, and golden blonde from a third.

The buzz of voices grew louder and louder. The corridor was misty and indistinct now, and Ginny was quite sure that she saw the edge of the buffet table. The room was so dark that her eyes hadn't adjusted yet, but she could tell that it was filled with a crowd of frighteningly glossy and expensive people, and that Rita Skeeter seemed to be holding court in the middle. She felt Luna on one side, and Dean on the other.

"You're going to be all right, Ginny," he said quietly.

"You know more than you've said, don't you?" she asked. "About what happened back there, I mean. With… with Malfoy."

"I know that you're very brave." He squeezed her hand.

_How good he is._ Again, she felt a little ashamed—no. _I won't feel shame again. About anything. I'm past that. Time to evolve, Ginny Weasley. It never really ends, does it? But I'll never give up, and I'll never give in, not to anyone at all. Especially not to myself. _She took a deep breath.

"I do think you'll be all right," said Luna. "I've got the Zigzag-Horned Snorkack Call prepared, if you need it."

The veil had thinned; she was now only a few feet from the gallery space. Her art called to her in a strong, clear voice. "I'll be all right," she said. She stepped up the stairs, into the flash of Muggle cameras, the excited wave of questions, the eager round of smiling faces, and the first night of her dizzying rise in the art world.

END OF INTERMISSION BETWEEN PART ONE AND PART TWO


	39. Horror of Horrors

A/N: Thanks to all the readers.

October 1st, 2001

"Argh!" Ginny sank her head in her hands. "Everybody wants to do lunch. There aren't enough days in the week to cover this many lunches. If I used an illegal Time-Turner and ate lunch nine hundred times a day for the rest of my life, I couldn't have lunch with all of these people."

"We've already made a prioritized lunch list," called Colin from the kitchen.

"We've politely declined invitations from the editors of _Art Hourly, Art Daily, Art Weekly, Art Semiweekly, Art QuasiDemiHemiWeekly and all Subsidiaries Thereof,_ and accepted only the one from _Art Monthly_," added Tony, carrying in a plate. "By the way, lunch is ready."

"Thanks," said Ginny abstractedly, biting into a sandwich. "Shouldn't I be eating this with somebody rather important?"

Colin and Tony exchanged hurt looks. "_We're_ quite exceptionally important," Colin said huffily.

"I know you are. I'm dreadfully sorry. I'm just a bit nervous. You do know what it's about… and I'm sure I can avoid it, but still, I'd rather face a legion of rabid zombie art critics than, uh… well, you know… " said Ginny.

"So I've gathered. Better not let Dean hear you use the z-word, by the way," said Tony. "You know how he always gets."

_Dean!_ Ginny sighed inwardly. _There_ was one area of her life that didn't seem to be going as smoothly as all the rest, at the moment. Well, no time to worry about that now.

"Everybody wants to have my people call their people, too," Ginny said moodily.

"I know," said Colin. "We're your people. We got rid of the last people, remember?"

Ginny nodded. She remembered a little _too_ well. A number of quite unfamiliar people had turned up after her star began to rise, all claiming to be long-lost Weasley cousins who would greatly appreciate jobs in her artistic entourage. George and Ron had smilingly given them Genetic Testing Jujubes, which stretched their noses out to alarming lengths. They'd all had great difficulty in getting out the door, but Colin and Tony had been more than happy to provide assistance. The nature of some of the said assistance had left Ginny nervously wondering if the Muggle police would become involved, before all was said and done.

The clock whirred, and then struck the hour. A bright blue bird sprang out.

"Cuckoo! Cuckoo!  
I've got some news for you!  
I looked outside, and saw an owl,  
Approaching fast, with a Howler foul—"

"Oh, gods, not another one!" groaned Ginny. She shoved her chair back from the table. "That's it. I'm going to my studio. It can't find me there."

"But what about Ron and George—" Colin began to protest.

"Tell them that's where I am. Or tell them I'm dead. Or tell them I ran away from home. No—that'll never work. George knows where I threatened to go when I was six years old, and that's the first place he'll look. Anyway, I'm getting out of here. _Apparate!_"

"But—" began Tony.

It was too late. Ginny had gone.

"Maybe _we_ ought to pretend we're dead," said Colin. "That owl's going to come after us next."

"We can't," said Tony. "We've got to arrange an Artist's Luncheon for Ginny with Sir Truman Sniffingsworth at _Madam Tippet's Terribly Twee Gallery and Lunchroom _next Thursday. We can't do that from beyond the grave."

"I see your point," said Colin. "He's a screaming queen, but he does love red hair. He'd whip out the chequebook for an option on her next sculpture before the deconstructed olive tart with olive oil sorbet and marscapone death-by-chocolate mousse even arrived."

"Indeed he would," said Tony, kissing the back of Colin's neck. "And speaking of whipping something out…"

"You naughty boy," said Colin. "Do we have time before faking our own deaths to avoid attacks by crazed owls seeking Ginny?"

"Oh, yes," said Tony. "And let's use those masks again. Those were loads of fun last time. No… wait… they were accidentally put in with the wash. Damn."

"We might make some new ones," said Colin, a devilish light entering his eyes that might have earned the approval of Loki himself. "Why don't we try owl feathers?"

At her art studio, Ginny leaned her head against the ceramic tile of the kitchen wall, waiting for the espresso maker to finish. Her forehead felt hot and sweaty, and strands of her hair were sticking to her face. Her heart pounded as if she'd just finished running a race, although she wasn't at all sure, yet, if she'd won or lost. Or perhaps she was still in the middle of learning to run. She was never sure about that.

Ginny's night at the _Bas Bleu_ gallery had been bewildering and glorious, her art lit up by a thousand flashbulbs, and the cresting wave of excitement steadily lifted her to something almost like fame. She exploded into prominence within a few months. Every influential art critic had attended the art opening, and the word spread like witchfire through gallery owners. All of them booked appointments to see the models, and then everyone wanted commissions, and her old pieces sold, and every single minute of her day was unbelievably busy and she was fully booked for the rest of her life and several incarnations beyond.

It was hard to even find time to take a deep breath. _Of course… of course, it wasn't always like that, was it?_ Ginny sighed, tracing the pattern of the tile with one finger. Her defenses felt distinctly down that day. She was usually able to keep these particular thoughts out of her head better than this. No. She would not think about those seventeen endless days in May when time had slowed to a crawl for her, caught on the cusp of change, filled with events that seemed to span a lifetime. And they had all revolved around a pale young man as surely as a moon circling a planet. No. She would not remember.

Because then, once she was truly free of the boy she refused to remember, time jerked back into gear. It rushed forward with dizzying speed, rolling over all obstacles.

Rita Skeeter went first. Percy had what he referred to as a "friendly chat" with her in which wizarding libel laws were invoked in all their glory; three filing-elves had been required simply to carry all the relevant volumes to the meeting. Certain arcane penalties were mentioned, including several that involved dragons. Rita emerged very chastened. Her articles about Ginny dripped fawning syrup from that day forward, and Harry was never mentioned again.

Next, Mrs. Fustian had shown up outside her flat one day, an ingratiating smile on her face. She said something about how lovely it had always been to have Ginny working under her, and how fondly she recalled the _Sans and Serif_ days, and if Ginny would be so kind as to give her a reference? Well, of course she would. Ginny had looked at her former boss and remembered when this woman had terrorized her so, and how thoroughly she had always knuckled under in the past, and how easy it would be to snap back with the same cruelty now. She had said that she'd think about it. Then she'd told George and Ron that she didn't even want to know what awful thing they'd done, but whatever it was, surely they'd done enough of it by now. They disavowed all knowledge of Mrs. Fustian's fate. Since Ron had always been an absolutely dreadful liar, Ginny decided that they were probably telling the truth. Also, she'd seen some zig-zag shaped marks on Mrs. Fustian's calves, and Luna was going about looking distinctly satisfied. Ginny used Percy's influence to got her a job in the _More-or-Less Meaningless Department of Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar-Related Minutae_ involving the question of whether not quotation marks should go inside or outside commas in ongoing versions of the _7,678,586th Standard Wizarding Dictionary, Infinitely Revised Edition_, and considered the matter closed.

The hardest thing to deal with, of course, had been Harry. A chill ran up Ginny's spine, and the room no longer seemed too warm. Wasn't that espresso _ever_ going to get done? She still broke out into a cold sweat whenever she thought of Harry Potter. Percy had written a letter to him, of course, on official Ministry paper. It had ordered him to cease and desist his efforts to contact her. He'd planned to have it delivered by Arachnos, who had grumbled that he didn't see why _he_ had to take on all the jobs that were undoubtedly going to involve being blasted to cinders with his ashes shoved into a box somewhere on a shelf in the Department of Mysteries, never to be seen again. "No," Ginny had said, hoping that her voice didn't waver. "I'm going to deliver it myself." She'd thought she was prepared for the storm that she knew would break over her head, but she hadn't been, of course. Percy had pleaded, Ron had blustered, Dean had stormed in outrage, George had threatened to Miniaturize her and lock her in a shoebox, and her father had somehow got wind of it and sent her a long, thoughtful letter that begged her to reconsider having anything at all to do with Harry, ever again.

But she had stood firm. She'd wanted to jump onto a broom and fly as fast and as far as she could to the ends of the earth rather than face Harry down and tell him to leave her alone. And she knew that this was exactly why she had to do it.

Ginny had stood in front of him with a face like stone and stuck the letter out at him as if it were a wand loaded with a Killing curse. Harry had taken it from her, his face unreadable. They were standing in a nondescript Ministry room tucked away in a warren of offices; it might have even been the same room where her interrogation had originally been done that day in May, Ginny realized.

"You know what's in this," she said, without preamble.

"I do," said Harry.

"I want you to leave me alone."

"Don't you even want to know what I have to say?"

"No," she said, thinking how typical it was of Harry that he'd speak to her as if none of those terrible things had happened between them in the spring, as if he'd never forced her to be tested for Imperius, or chased her through Gringotts, or traced her to the Lyme Bay cottage, or left her in London the next day until he deigned to return, defenseless against Hermione and the Aurors.

"I just want to tell you what I originally learned then, in May. I just want you to know—"

"I don't want to hear it," she interrupted.

Harry got the obdurate look on his face that she remembered all too well. "I know that I treated you badly, do you think I don't realize that? But you have to understand why it all happened the way it did. Yeah, I know; I couldn't prove anything except that bit about the money, but there was more, and we both know it. Ginny, you've _got_ to know. I never had a chance to tell you."

"And you're not telling me now." She knew what he was going to say, and she could not bear to hear Harry say it. _I think I'll go mad if he does. I really do—no. No, I'm stronger than that. I've got to be, or I wouldn't have come here and talked to him in the first place. I would've just let Arachnos deliver this letter._

Harry looked at her earnestly. Against her will, Ginny remembered all the times she had so desperately wanted him to look at her in exactly that way, with those beautiful deep green eyes. She had wanted him to look at her as if he really saw her. _But is he even doing that now?_ she wondered.

"Ginny," he said, "I've got to tell you what I know about the Malf—"

"Here's the letter, Harry. Now leave me alone."

He'd caught at her sleeve as she'd left the room. She'd shaken off his hand, her lips set into a tight line. "What _is_ it, Harry?"

"Just one thing," he said quietly. "I want you to think about hearing what I have to say, at some point. All right? Just think about it."

Ginny considered that. It was the most reasonable that Harry had been about the entire thing since the very beginning, really. "All right," she said. "Maybe I will. But I don't know if I'll ever want to hear it, Harry. You'd better just understand that."

Everything else had been easy, next to that. Well, _almost_ everything… Ginny shuddered.

The espresso maker gave a long hiss. She jumped, and poured herself a small cup.

She had magically built a tiny room just off the bedroom, and this was where she went when the pulse of her new life beat too frantically, or the load of her growing new self weighed on her too heavily, or when the memories of those days in May whispered too quietly in the darkest moments of the long nights. She went there now, and she lingered in the doorway, sipping espresso, feeling the deep, strong peace flow into her. Here was the heart, the soul.

A dark, twisted skeleton leaned on a cane, a sort of chilling combination of Lucius Malfoy and Lord Voldemort. It looked long-dead, remnants of flesh barely clinging to its bones, and yet somehow ready to come to life at any moment. He was _Past._ Nobody ever wanted to spend very long looking at him, and yet they usually did, a bitter, sad expression on their faces. Sometimes, they bowed their heads, as if remembering everything they had lost.

A strong, hearty wizard strode smilingly onward, chin high, happy determination in his stance. It was impossible to say who he actually resembled, but he had a vague, generic similarity to every Minister of Magic in recent years, especially the doomed ones, such as Rufus Scrimgeour. He was _Present_. This figure ought to have evoked feelings of optimism and cheerfulness in everyone who looked at the piece, and yet somehow, everybody got uncomfortable expressions on their faces when they reached that statue, and they tended to hurry on to the next one. The closer in time the Ministers were, the more likely they were to be failures everyone much preferred to forget. There was no mistaking that this one was striding buoyantly towards an abyss, and with a few more steps, he would topple over the edge. Something about his arrogant stance and cocky grin foretold his fall. Even though there was no physical likeness, Ginny had put more of Harry Potter in him than anyone else, and perhaps that was what everyone really saw.

The last statue was the one that viewers always lingered on the longest. He was a boy entering into young manhood, somewhere between sixteen and eighteen years old, standing straight and looking warily into the distance, his feet planted firmly, his fists clenched against some invisible adversary. There was passion in his face, and pain, and intimations of the power he would someday wield, although whether for good or evil, it was impossible to tell. It was the moment before he made some irrevocable choice, one that would forever determine the course of his own life, at least, and perhaps of many more lives than just his own. He was _Future._ He didn't look the least bit like Draco Malfoy, because, of course, Ginny hadn't spent even one millisecond thinking about him when she sculpted the statue. And yet, he was Draco. Everyone always looked at him much longer than they had planned to do, and when Ginny studied their faces—because she always watched people when they looked at her art—she thought that they remembered the Draco Malfoy who they had been trying to forget, too.

They stood in a circle as if facing one another, or running from each other, or taking their places in the figures of a dance. They should have been unsettling, and Ginny knew that they were, really, but to visit them was to enter her heart's kingdom, and she always found peace there. She dropped into a little chair and studied the Draco statute, sighing. She usually tried not to spend too much time looking at him. She had a way of failing.

She sat for a long time, letting the silence of the room wash over her, feeling herself become the center of the sculptural group, knowing in her heart of hearts that it was exactly true. One day, she would have to confront exactly what that meant. But not now. Now, there was only the quiet, the calm, the restfulness, the—

_Bang! Bang! Bang bang BANG!_

Ginny jumped.

The doorbell rang aggressively, over and over. "Oi! Ginny! We know you're in there," Ron yelled from the corridor.

Ginny scurried into the next room. _I wonder if I could hide in a kitchen cupboard?_ She thought seriously about finding out if she would fit._Maybe if I just folded one arm under both of my knees. Or I could use a Shrinking spell, and lock myself in a shoebox. Fred and George used to do it to me all the time-_

"Come on, Gin. We're not going away until you open this door," said George's voice.

"We'll break it down if we have to," added Ron.

"We can't, little bro. It's protected by spells, remember?"

"Oh. Well, wouldn't Cudgel Chocolates work?"

"No."

"How about Tunneling Truffles? We could try going _under_ the door, couldn't we?"

"I don't think the neighbors would appreciate it too much."

"Fuck-all do I care whether they appreciate it or not! Oh, sorry, Ginny, if you can hear me- all right, all right… what about Machine Gun Mints?"

"I think we might give knocking a bit more of a chance to work, Ron."

From the fusillade of blows that resulted, Ginny wondered if the Machine Gun Mints really _had_ been used after all.

"It's not working," said Ron. "Ginny! Are you in there? I know you're in there. I can hear you breathing. Luna wouldn't say where you went, and I know what _that_ always means. Are you eating enough? I'll bet you're not eating anything. You never eat once you start working on new art projects. Oh, forget about magic! I'm just kicking this door down. Ready, George? On the count of three. One—two—"

"Hold on, little bro. Let's try the clever approach. Gin…" George paused. It was a rather ominous pause, Ginny thought uncomfortably. "If you don't come out right now," he went on, "we'll go to the dinner ourselves. Now, you may have no qualms about throwing us to the wolves, but if we do go on our own, you'll have no control over what we do or say. And you know what we're going to say, Ginny."

A tremor of alarm went through her.

"You wouldn't," she said.

"I would," said George.

"You couldn't."

"I could."

"Oh, don't, George."

"I will," her brother said relentlessly. "I'll tell Mum that I saw you wearing robes so short that they didn't even cover the bottom of your knickers."

Ginny groaned and went to open the door. She _knew_ when she was beaten.

"We have to do this, you know. We really haven't any choice. So we might as well do it in a reasonably cheerful manner. Come on, let's see some Weasley smiles," said George in an encouraging way as they all dragged their feet up the front walk to the Burrow.

"I'm all out. I just can't _do_ this," moaned Ginny.

"Bloody hell, I don't want to do it either," said Ron. "But we've got to."

"Couldn't we just disappear? Or—oh! I know. What if we faked our own deaths? Rita Skeeter would write a story about some tragic accident or other, maybe something involving lead paint; we've got her terrorized enough so that she'd publish anything I told her to."

"Too late for that, sis," said George. "We've put it off long enough."

Ginny nodded miserably. She knew he was right. She'd owled her mother several times since May; she'd even seen her more than once, and Molly Weasley had radiated tight-lipped disapproval every time. But this was the first family dinner at home since what Ginny had been referring to all summer as "Mum's Howler Owl Assault."

"What happened to that last owl, by the way?" she asked George.

"What last owl?"

"Never mind," said Ginny. She was pretty sure that she'd seen Colin moving towards it with a crafty look in his eye just before she Apparated away.

"Maybe this won't be so bad after all," she said hopefully.

"You're right," said Ron. "You never know. Might just be a nice dinner. Maybe Mum will make her roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Potatoes, gravy, green beans, horseradish sauce, marmalade tart…" He began to sound wistful. "We've been eating out of tins _so_ bloody much lately. Could be lovely really."

"Yes," said George. "Let's keep that thought in mind. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, little bro."

The door swung wide. Molly Weasley stood on the threshold in an apron, her face wreathed in a beaming smile that appeared to have been retrieved from a box and pasted on.

"Hel-_lo_, Ginny darling!" she caroled in the sweetest of tones. "George! Ron! Just in time for dinner, I see. Of course, you might have arrived a bit earlier, but never mind. Come and sit down. Your father's somewhere about, I really couldn't say where; tinkering in the garage with some Muggle device or other he's dragged home from work, and Percy's with him, no doubt. _They_ might have come in a bit earlier as well, but least said, soonest mended, as they say."

Ginny, George, and Ron exchanged glances, and went up the front steps as if marching bravely to their doom. The smells wafting from the kitchen were horribly, hideously familiar, and all connected with gloomy punishments for the worst possible childhood offenses.

"I've made _all_ your favorites," said Molly. "Brussel sprouts, boiled cabbage, Marmite and Spam spread on toast, Spam and lima bean casserole—"

"Can't I have something with a bit less Spam in it?" whispered George.

_That's the least of our problems,_ thought Ginny, but she only hissed "Hush."

"Stuffed vegetable marrow," Molly went on, ushering them towards the table. "Veal sweetbread soufflé. And as for the main course—well, I've saved the best for last!"

"Oh, no. No, no, no," whispered George.

"It can't be," whispered Ron. "She _wouldn't_... would she?"

Ginny looked at her mother's face with a sinking sensation of foreboding.

"Haggis!" said Molly with an ear-to-ear smile.

"Wonder if it's too late for that faking-our-own-death plan?" whispered Ron.

"What was that, dear?" asked Molly, pulling out a chair.

"Ah—I said that I'll remember this meal until my last breath," said Ron. "Especially the Spam."

"So will I. And it just might come sooner than any of us planned, if that casserole provides an accurate clue," muttered George.

Molly bustled about the stove, opening the oven to take some steaming nameless horror out with an oversized orange and purple plaid hot pad. "I'm sure I don't know when your father's planning to come in," she said with an edge to her voice. "The souffle's bound to fall before he does."

George jumped up with lightning speed. "Why don't we go out to the garage and bring him in? Percy as well."

"Great idea!" Ron said enthusiastically.

Ginny's mouth dropped open. They all but left _skid_ marks on their way out. "You wankers," she muttered under her breath.

"What was that, dear?" asked her mother.

"Uh… they look like bankers these days, don't you think? They're dressing so much better than they used to do," fumbled Ginny. _Oh, that one isn't even going to fool Mum!_

"Not as I've noticed," sniffed Molly. "Neither one of them seems the least bit inclined to go into a respectable profession. It's always been the joke shop."

"Um… Percy's doing really well in the Ministry," said Ginny, rather desperately trying a different tack.

"I suppose so," said Molly, poking rather viciously at the brussel sprouts. "Not that I'd know in particular. He doesn't write to me dreadfully often, now does he?"

"I don't know anything about that," mumbled Ginny.

Molly gave a short laugh. "He seems to be talking rather more often to _you._ At any rate… " She settled into a chair and patted the one next to her. Ginny sat down, stifling a sigh. "So! How _have_ you been getting along lately, Ginny dear? Very busy with those art projects of yours, I've no doubt at all."

"Yes, very," said Ginny. "You saw the _Fossils_ series, Mum. Remember?"

"Of course I do. It was a bit _disturbing_, I thought," said Molly. "I may not know much about art, but I know what I like. Still, art's such a nice hobby to have."

Ginny couldn't stifle the sigh this time. "Mum, it's not a hobby. It's a profession. And I've been very successful lately. A great many galleries want to display my works, and some influential buyers have been interested."

Molly nodded. "And that's all very good, dear. But… well, time does go by, and then, one day…"

A pause. _She's going to say it,_ thought Ginny. _I know it. I just know. I was never very good at Divination, but I would bet a thousand galleons that Mum is about to say-_

"I've just heard from Bill and Fleur," said Molly. "Victoire was christened last week; she's had her one-month birthday now. Did you send them anything?"

Richer by an imaginary thousand galleons, Ginny nodded. "A silver rattle."

"How lovely. Of course…" Molly got a twinkle in her eye. "I can never have too many grandchildren, you know!"

Ginny jumped up as if propelled from her chair by springs. "Dad _is_ taking an awfully long time, isn't he? Why don't I go and see what's keeping them?"

_Now I've left skid marks, too,_ she thought as the screen door slammed behind her.

Unfortunately, she realized that she'd waited just a bit too long to get any real reprieve. Her father and Percy were just coming up the side walk from the garage to the door, and George and Ron trailed behind them.

"Why'd you have to come back _now_?" she hissed at Percy.

"Because as is the case with all fears that haunt us, haggis cannot be avoided indefinitely, but must be confronted," he said. "Hello, Ginny." He gave her a stiff hug, but his smile was filled with real warmth.

She closed her eyes briefly. "Thank all the gods you're here, Percy. I just might get through this."

"It's really that bad?"

"I think it's going to be." She turned slightly and forced a smile. "Hi, Dad."

Arthur Weasley gave her his tired smile. "Hello, Ginny. There's veal sweetbread soufflé as well, isn't there?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"Be brave," he said. "And be good to your mother. She's missed you, even though she might have some trouble showing it."

"I thought Mum wasn't going to have _any_ trouble in showing it," said Ginny, startled.

"Well—things aren't always what they seem," Arthur said cryptically. "Shall we go in?"

"No time like the present," said George from behind them.

"Where's the _Daily Prophet_, Percy dear?" Molly called from the kitchen. "You do have it, don't you?"

"No," Percy replied, tucking something into a pocket of his robes.

"How odd," she said. "I could swear that I saw you with it."

"It must have been something else," he said.

"Then what was that?" asked Ginny.

"I'll be in directly, Mum," said Percy with a smile, stepping on his sister's foot.

"Ow!" she hissed. "What's that for?"

"I'm not letting Mum see today's paper," said Percy under his breath. "That's what that is for."

"Whyever not?"

"Can't you just trust me, and take a bit of time off from your obsessive need to find out absolutely everything for yourself?"

"No," said Ginny, nimbly lifting the paper from Percy's pocket.

The first thing that flashed across her field of vision was Harry's name, in huge bold letters. _Fuck! Rita Skeeter strikes again. She probably goes on to say that I was seen sneaking into a torrid love nest with him at three in the morning, complete with pantingly hot faked photos and unbearably lurid details supposedly seen by leering witnesses who just happened to be clinging onto the window with doublesided sticky tape at the time. The problem is that we didn't terrorize Rita enough in the first place. Zig-Zag Snorkacks didn't begin to do the job. Perhaps a few Nuclear Nutterbutters…_

But then she realized that the letters that made up his name were _too_ large. The typeface used in Rita Skeeter's articles were never that large; her articles only appeared in the gossip column. They weren't on the front page. And the article about Harry was decidedly on the front page. _Harry Potter Leads Auror Team Investigating Goings-On at St. Mungo's: Sinister Secrets Among the Mad?_ And—oh gods—there was a photo of Harry's face exactly as she'd last seen him, grim and triumphant, utterly self-satisfied, with the look of a man who knew beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt that he was right.

_The Boy Who Lived has faced down the likes of Lucius Malfoy and Lord Voldemort (not to mention that he's the one who's made it possible for us all to say his true name), but this just may prove to be his hardest assignment yet. He's been named the head of a crack Auror team given the most dreaded job in the wizarding world, to tackle strange, unnamed disturbances in the dangerous psychiatric ward at St. Mungo's. For the safety and protection of the entire wizarding world, the maniacs must be contained, but few wizards would dare to take on such a hazardous job. Will it all be in a day's work for our hero? Only time can tell-_

"The haggis is getting cold!" Molly called.

Ginny slammed the paper shut, stuffing it back into Percy's pocket.

She really, really wondered if it was too late to fake her own death now.

+++

**Author notes:** I know... there didn't SEEM to be almost any Draco in this chapter. He will return. ;)


	40. Chapter 40

"Anonymous Coward"

(from Slashdot) A name automatically given to an anonymous user who posts comments on a message board. i.e; "I set my threshold so that I don't have to look at all the stupid comments from Anonymous Cowards."

From _Urban Dictionary_, Originally posted by Amanda Apr 20, 2004

If you could see my inside, or whatever you want to name it; my spirit, that's what I fear. I think I'm ruined. They kept trying to put me in the ground but I wasn't ready. But if I had... if I had goodness, I lost it. If I had anything tender in me, I shot it dead! How could I write to you after what I'd done? What I'd seen?

- Inman to Ada in _Cold Mountain_

+++

Dinner was even worse than she'd expected. This was quite a feat, thought Ginny, considering that little short of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse stopping by for a spot of Spam before inciting Armageddon would have surprised her. George and Ron had talked about the latest innovations at the joke shop, all of which had been met with sniffs by her mother. Percy had nervously rambled on for quite some time about the most recent innovations in filing techniques for Aladdin's lamp licensing. Molly had made noises that might have indicated the mildest possible interest, or might not have done, and eventually he'd fallen silent. Her father had said almost nothing. Then the table had been cleared, and Molly had pulled out an album and begun showing roll after roll after roll of photos of Bill, Fleur, and Victoire on holiday at the seashore. Ginny sipped at overstewed tea and tried not to grimace. The treacle and mincement tart was just as horrifying as she remembered. _Did Mum actually made her old-fashioned mincement with a calf's head again? Certainly tastes like it._

"She's simply the most adorable little baby, don't you think?" said her mother, pointing out a picture where Victoire played in the sand while Bill looked on, beaming a bit tiredly.

Ginny nodded. She agreed; her niece had clearly inherited her full share of Veela genes from Fleur, and if the flow of cash from Bill's treasure-hunting escapades ever ran low, the temptation to allow her to model for _Dr. Bumbler's Best Baby Food_ might be almost irresistible. But they'd been at this for so long that Victoire was starting to look distinctly cranky.

_How much longer does Mum plan to go on with this?_ the photograph of Bill mouthed to Ginny when Molly turned away for a moment to say something to George.

_Your guess is as good as mine,_ Ginny mouthed back.

"But Tory needs to be _changed_," he whispered.

"I've never heard that photograph-babies needed to be changed," said Ginny, startled.

"You'd be surprised at all the things you've never heard," her photograph-brother said cryptically. "Gin, it wouldn't be a bad idea to make some excuse to leave. Fast."

"What? _Why?_ I mean, why now? And I'd like to, but—"

"I can't say anything more," Bill hissed, and he returned to pose with his family, rather exhaustedly waving for the camera.

Molly closed the photo album, and Ginny looked up at the sound. The room had cleared out. _Ooh! When I get my hands on those brothers of mine-_

"Do sit down, Ginny dear," said Molly, putting a hand on her shoulder.  
Ginny realized belatedly that she'd risen half out of her chair.  
"Oh. Of course, Mum. Er—where did everybody go?"

"I've sent them all out to the garage to help your father."

"Okay… um…" Ginny saw that her mother was reaching for something by the side of the chair. _Oh, no._ Her stomach was starting to sink. She really thought that it might go right through the bottom of her shoes when she saw what her mother was holding. Percy had been too late; Molly Weasley already had her own copy of that morning's _Daily Prophet_.

She shook her head, making the _tsk-tsk_ clucking noise that Ginny distinctly remembering hearing all too often during her childhood, generally when she herself had tried to climb an apple tree and fallen off, or stolen a broom and crashed it into the pond. "How dreadful," she murmured. "That poor, poor boy. So much on his shoulders now. I suppose you've heard about this?"

"A bit," Ginny said cautiously. "It's that St. Mungo's thing, right?"

Molly nodded. "Harry's been put in charge of the entire investigation. It's such a responsibility; they know he can handle it, of course, but it doesn't seem fair that he should have to do it all alone."

"He's not exactly alone," said Ginny. "Harry's got the entire Ministry behind him, not to mention the Department of Mysteries, all the Aurors, and Hermione Granger."

"She's a lovely girl," said Molly. She lowered her voice. "Not quite our _class_, of course, not our sort. Not of our world. But then, she can't help that." She paused. "You know, he'd like very much to see you again."

_I knew it. I knew it!_ "Would he? How do you know that, Mum?" Ginny fought to keep her voice steady.

"Why, he stopped by for tea last week. We had a lovely talk." Molly smiled triumphantly, as if delivering a piece of long-saved news.

"What a surprise." The room was warm, but she suddenly felt very cold.

"Not at all," said Molly. "I'd invited him to come." She leaned forward, towards her daughter. "Ginny dear, I don't know exactly what sort of disagreements you've had in the past, but every couple needs to learn how to get past certain arguments. Ask yourself honestly—did they ever really amount to anything that couldn't be forgiven and forgotten?"

"_Forgiven and forgotten?_" echoed Ginny.

"Well, perhaps it wouldn't always be the easiest task in the world. But Ginny, isn't it time to reconcile with Harry?" Molly asked earnestly. "He _needs_ you now. He'll be facing more than anyone should have to face on their own with this trouble at St. Mungo's, and the gods only know how long it might all go on. He's got to have someone to lean on."

Her mother's sheer inability to face the most basic facts was so stunning that Ginny could hardly think of anything to say. "Hermione seems to be filling that role just fine," was all she could come out with.

"He doesn't love Hermione," Molly said softly.

There _really_ wasn't anything to say to that.

The side door opened. "Ginny?" her father's voice called. "Come out here a minute, why don't you?"

She fled.

Ron was poking at an unidentifiable greasy upside-down object in the garage. "How _could_ you?" she hissed at him.

"Mum sent us all out here," said Ron, in tones of injured innocence. "You know her evil-eye look of doom—what else could any of us do?"

"Where are George and Percy, then?"

"I don't know. George was showing Perce a broom the last I saw, and he was trying to fake enthusiasm. Look, Gin; I'm serious, Mum really did chase us out, and Dad promised he'd keep an eye on you."

Arthur laid a hand on her shoulder. "Walk with me, Ginny," he said, and they started down the path through the long grasses behind the house.

They walked silently for several minutes. This area had never looked the same after the fire in the middle of her fifth year, thought Ginny. She had been so terrified then, when Bellatrix had chased her through the slough and she hadn't known if she would ever be able to find her way out, and then Harry had found her and they'd stood together against the Death Eaters. He had made her feel so safe then, she thought sadly. The Christmas hols that year were one of the few stretches of time when Draco Malfoy hadn't entered her mind for even a moment. Maybe it was because if she'd thought of him, she would have remembered only that his aunt had tried to kill her, or more likely, to kidnap her. What would have happened then?

She wondered if she would have been brought to Malfoy Manor early. They might have reserved her for the sixteen-year-old Draco then, not as a reward, but as an incentive. He had been only a few months older than the Draco in the birthday portrait she hadn't dared to even unwrap since the day she'd stashed him in the closet in the bedroom of her art studio, she realized. For all Ginny knew, Lucius Malfoy and Voldemort might even have jointly presented her to Draco the next day, because he was home for Christmas hols as well. She would have been only fifteen years old, terrified and miserable and still thinking herself in love with Harry, and she would have _hated_ Draco when they gave her to him, and she would have fought him and… and then, she wouldn't have. In the sweet, secret privacy of his own rooms, away from his father and Voldemort and the Death Eaters and everyone else who wanted to hurt her, the most shameful secret of all was that in a very little time, she wouldn't have fought him. She knew that now. _And oh, how sweet his kisses would have been._

"Ginny?" Her father's voice jerked her out of her thoughts.

"Huh? Oh. Sorry, Dad. What is it?"

They paused. The two of them were completely surrounded by long grasses now.

"I wanted to speak to you here," Arthur said quietly, and Ginny felt another chill. She forced a little laugh.

"I don't know why. Are you planning on telling me any deep, dark secrets?"

"You'll have to judge that for yourself, I suppose." Arthur's eyes remained serious. "Ginny, we haven't got long before everyone becomes suspicious about what we're doing here, so I'll get right to the point. Harry was here last week."

"Yes, Mum said that she invited him." Ginny hadn't meant to put an edge on her voice, but it was there anyway.

"It's not quite that simple." He sighed. "Molly believes that she did, but the truth is that he invited himself and allowed her to think it was her own doing. Harry never does anything for a simple reason, as you might have noticed."

"No." Ginny traced a pattern in the ground with her foot. "You've always known that, haven't you, Dad?"

"I have," said Arthur. "It's one of my greatest regrets. I never should have allowed him into our family in the way that I did. But sometimes, it seems easier to simply allow things to take their own course, when your mother so clearly wants them to—well, never mind that. But I can't help feeling that I ought to have kept him away from you, Ginny."

She thought again of those Christmas hols when the first Burrow had burnt down, before they rebuilt. Her father had pointedly sat between herself and Harry on the sofa for hours on end when she longed to be alone with him, and she had been absolutely furious. She understood so much more now. "_I_ should have kept him away from me. Don't worry about it, Dad. What did you really want to talk about?"

"Just this. I heard the entire conversation, although I don't think either Molly or Harry realized that. I didn't learn anything more about the St. Mungo's investigation that what you'd be able to read in the _Daily Prophet_. But I did learn something else."

Ginny felt a chill sweep over her yet again, even though it was a warm autumn day with a brilliantly clear sky.

"Harry was trying to get information about you and Draco Malfoy," said Arthur. "He believes that you're in contact with him. He was being extremely subtle about it; he never asked anything directly. But I'd swear that's what he was doing, Ginny." He looked at her with tired brown eyes. "Is it true?"

She suddenly seemed to have trouble breathing. "_No,_ Dad. It isn't true."

"Your mother believes that Rita Skeeter's stories about your connection with him this spring were ridiculous nonsense, made up to sell papers," said Arthur. It was a statement, not a question, for which Ginny was devoutly glad. She'd thought that it would be a Herculean task to convince her mother that she wasn't about to become Draco's love slave at any moment, permanently chained up in a dungeon with photos sold regularly to _Playwizard._ Her father was still looking at her in the same way, she realized uncomfortably.

"But is that really the entire truth, Ginny?" he asked.

She squirmed. "Um… look, Dad, maybe, um, we did know each other just a bit, but it was nothing like what those stories claimed… I mean…" She was the opposite of her brothers, she thought gloomily. She'd always had so much more trouble lying to her father.

"Draco Malfoy hasn't contacted me in months," she said abruptly. "I haven't heard a word from him or about him since the beginning of June. He dropped off the face of the earth about a week after he married Astoria Greengrass, as far as I know. Please, Dad, _please_… I don't want to talk about him anymore, ever again."

"All right," said Arthur. "We won't say another word about him. I learned to never mention the subject of the Malfoys in this house a very long ago, so that's nothing new, I suppose." He looked very sad, and Ginny wondered why. Lucius had hurt them all, each in different ways, but that was nothing to be _sad_ about.

"Anyway, Harry Potter is the immediate concern," he went on. "Ginny, watch out for him. I'll keep a sharp lookout for any news at the Ministry, as well. Be careful."

"Dad, what exactly do you mean?" Ginny was starting to wish she'd brought a wool jumper.

"I don't know, Ginny. I wish I did." His eyes were grave.

"That didn't go so badly," George said in tones of forced jolliness as they entered Ginny's flat.

"I suppose you're right, if you define 'didn't go so badly' strictly in terms of 'none of us died a horrible, lingering death'," said Percy moodily. He unbuttoned his outer robes and flung them down somewhere Ginny couldn't see. Trailing behind them and lingering on the stairs, she raised her eyebrows at the sight. _Perce really is letting his hair down. He'll be undoing a cufflink next._

"I had two helpings of that Spam and lima bean casserole," said Ron. "Give me a couple of hours before I can guarantee anything about the 'horrible, lingering death' part."

"In a couple of hours, little bro," said George, "I fully intend to be relaxing in the arms of—"

"Shh!" hissed Ron, jerking his thumb backwards. "I just heard something."

"Oh dear. I was absolutely sure that she was at least a full minute behind us all," Ginny was almost positive she heard Percy say in the lowest possible mumble. She waited a few moments, and then started up the stairs. She knew better than to either let on that she'd heard anything, or to act theatrically innocent.

"I never want to eat Spam again as long as I live." She flopped down on the couch, next to Percy's robes.

"I didn't know that you wanted to eat it before," said Ron.

"I didn't, but I never wanted my memory wiped so thoroughly that I'd forget the fact that it even _existed_ before—" Ginny stopped. Something unpleasant flashed through her mind and then was gone, much too quickly for her to even say what it had been.

"What is it?" asked George.

"Nothing," said Ginny. He'd been watching her face too intently, she thought."I hate Memory charms. I don't even like being reminded of them. And I'm tired. That's all. I think I could sleep for about the next thousand years. Let yourselves out, all right?" She trudged towards the bedroom and fell into bed.

Voices interwove in the other room, in and out and below her thread of sleep.

"What in bloody hell was really going on with Mum?" _Ron,_, she thought.

"We've got to keep Harry away from Ginny. Percy, can't you do anything?" _And that was George._

"Not unless he takes any sort of overt action; you know that. But he hasn't even tried to speak to Ginny in months. I wish I knew more about the St. Mungo's investigation, but it's quite secret. It's very complex, and I really couldn't say more than that…"

"I'm worried about Dad. Something seems off. Don't know what it is, though."

Sleep washed over her again for a little while, submerging everything else. Ron's voice jerked her up to the surface again.

"Ginny wouldn't have anything to do with any of the Malfoys! Are you mad?"

"Shh. Do you want to wake her up? I'm not saying she would," said George's calming voice. "Only Harry might think so."

"Why? Because he believes those bloody stupid stories Rita Skeeter was writing months ago?"

"I don't know what Harry believes."

"It's entirely possible that Harry has some foundation for suspicion," Percy said thoughtfully. "That is to say— ergh!"

A scuffling sound.

"I really think you ought to get your hands from round Perce's throat, little bro," said George.

"I won't. He's insulted Ginny. He said that she really _might_ be sneaking about with Malfoy-"

"Then I suppose that I'll have to do it for you," said George. _Thump._ "Still, Perce, I think you'd best explain what you meant."

_Cough._ "Nothing along those lines at all! I was about to say that Harry might have some reason to think that Draco Malfoy was involved with the attempted break-in at St. Mungo's. That's all."

"Oh," said Ron. "Ow. George, you didn't need to throw me quite so hard."

"It's only your head, Ronniekins. You don't need that."

Ginny held her breath, their voices drowned out by the pounding of her heart. Draco involved. Draco back in the same country, back in the same _city_…

Draco not contacting her. Not speaking to her, not owling her. Draco still as thoroughly and utterly gone as he'd been since the day of her art opening, when he'd turned and walked back into the room in that mysterious chamber, closing the door on her, a door that had never opened again.

Damn him. _Damn_ him. She had erased him from her heart and mind, knowing that he must have erased her so thoroughly that no trace could possibly be left. She had moved on. Of course she had done. He _could not_ have returned.

"Personally, I highly doubt that Malfoy had anything to do with it," said George. "I don't see what on earth he would have had to gain."  
"You're right," said Ron. "He wouldn't do anything unless it would benefit him personally. Harry went round the twist on the subject of Malfoys long ago, that's all. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think Draco Malfoy's loathsome and I always have and I'd happily slice off his skin inch by inch with a Rusty Razor Hex if I actually thought he'd ever had anything to do with Ginny, but that family's not _important_. He's the only one left anyway, isn't he? Or… no. What happened to his mother?"

"Nobody actually knows," said Percy. "It's generally assumed that she died several years ago, however."

"Huh. Well, she wasn't a bad sort, as I recall. That's rather sad, really."

"Yes," Percy said quietly. "I think that it is."

There was something strange about his words, thought Ginny, but the thought was rather far-away. Waves of sleep kept washing in and out.

"Well! Why don't we forget that this entire afternoon ever happened?" asked George. "Would repeatedly hitting each other over the head with sledgehammers be helpful, do you think?"

"Good idea," said Ron. "Actually, I liked that other idea you had. I think there's a portal right by here, and you can't find them too many places… Uh… is Ginny asleep?"

"I heard her snoring."

"Are you _sure_? Are you absolutely, positively, 100% sure?"

George sighed. The door creaked open. Ginny felt a draft of air, and she kept breathing evenly. She felt George poke her suddenly, but she really _was_ asleep; it was only that some small part of her kept drifting into wakefulness and hearing everything that her brothers said. She snuggled deeper into the blankets.

"She's asleep," announced George, tiptoeing back into the front room.

"Okay. Then, getting back to that other idea you had. We're free the rest of the night, right?"

"As a bird. The Ebola Eggnog orders won't be in until tomorrow. Perce, what about you?"

"I'm singularly plan-free, and in answer to your next question, I haven't seen Penny since April."

Ginny came a little closer to the surface. _What? What does Penelope have to do with anything? Percy was dating her, and then I think they broke up… but why…_

"Right," said George. "The Crystal Palace it is, then."

Her eyes snapped open. _Now_ she was awake. _Just keep breathing really, really evenly, Gin!_

"Ah, it's been too long," sighed Ron. "I've really missed Sarina. Anjuli too. And I always had a wonderful time with Devyani… did you ever see her, Perce?"

"She was present in the room when I originally chose my girl this summer, as I recall," said Percy. "A bit too fiery for my tastes. I imagine that all of yours were there, although you've run through so many that I can't quite remember them by name. Clarinda is so _soothing_- that's really the sort that I like. I think I recall Hannah as well, and I'm afraid that I couldn't abide anyone as bossy as she seems to be. Although I've spoken to her several times, and she's quite intelligent; I will say that."

"Hannah suits me all right," said George. "But a gentleman never kisses and tells, you know. I do like to stay with the same girl; I don't like switching about one bit."

"I suppose that's meant for me," Ron said defensively. "Look, I only tried a threesome _once_- all right, it was twice, or maybe three times, if you're going to be all nit-picky about it."

_Oh, my gods…_ Ginny muffled her face in a pillow. If her brothers had even the faintest idea that she'd overheard one word of this conversation, they'd probably lock her in a Muggle convent for the rest of her life.

"And the girls involved were very nice, too," Ron went on. "I mean, Madam Prudence made sure of that. It's not her fault that I can't seem to settle on one I really like best. She just keeps trying, and she's very patient. She's always so good about that sort of thing."

"She needs to be, or she wouldn't have stayed in business as long as she has," George said dryly. "How long has she been in charge of the Palace, anyway?"

"Well, that's the curious thing," said Percy. "I've done a bit of research into the records, actually; they're available in my department, and it's very difficult to say exactly when Prudence Temperata took on the job. The only explanation seems to be that a number of different proprietesses have had the same name."

"Yeah, and I'm sure it's all very interesting, Perce," Ron said impatiently, "but history can wait. Let's go, shall we?"

"You go on ahead, little bro," said George. "We'll catch up."

There was an eager scampering out the door. "It's been two and a half years since the more-than-overdue and devoutly-to-be-wished end of Ron and Hermione," Percy murmured. "Don't you think we ought to find him a girlfriend?"

"Maybe," said George. He sounded distracted, thought Ginny.

"I'll never be quite sure why the two of them rushed so precipitously into a romantic relationship in the first place, although I still think that it could have been avoided if _all_ of the Weasleys had enjoyed the privilege we should have had to begin with. I wouldn't have become entangled with Penny so early, either," said Percy. "It can all be laid at the door of sheer frustration, you know."

"Oh, don't start on that again," said George.

"It was our right," said Percy. "Damn it, we ought to have had the pureblood initiation. I'm still quite brassed off about it."

"Evidently," said George. "Let's make up for it now, all right?"

Ginny waited for at least twenty minutes after the door had closed behind them to let out the shrieks of horrified laughter. She pounded the pillows and rolled around the bed, finally falling onto the floor. Then, slowly, she sobered. It had all been a bit of a distraction, but then again, perhaps not.

_Four and a half months of trying to keep Malfoy out of my head,_ she thought, _and most of the time, I manage it. I really do._ But still, there were times when she couldn't. Some days, there were too many reminders; too many times when she heard his name, or when she saw a tall blond man who reminded her of him, or when she sat quietly during a long afternoon, looking out a window, and a low drawling voice seemed to echo in her ears again, and she felt the touch of long fingers trailing across her exquisitely sensitive skin, and she shivered.

_But today was the worst. Between my mother… and Harry… and this St. Mungo's thing… and… oh, I just won't think about it… ugh!_

She still felt so tired. Maybe she'd just go to bed early, and hope for dreamless sleep.

Once Ginny laid her head down on the pillow, of course, several hundred gallons of espresso immediately seemed to shoot through her veins, chasing out every vestige of sleeping ability she had ever possessed. She groaned.

_Flip. Flop. Toss. Turn._

_Lullabye, and goodnight…_ the clock by the bedside sang softly. _This isn't helping, is it?_

"No, but thanks for trying," said Ginny. She padded to the kitchen and drank warm milk. Maybe the problem was that she'd heard that really distinctly disturbing information about her brothers visiting the most famous whorehouse in the wizarding world. There were some things that she just didn't need to know. Okay; she'd try to block out the fact that anybody she shared any relationship with whatsoever had ever gone to the Crystal Palace. No; that wouldn't work either. As a pureblood, she was some sort of distant cousin to the entire wizarding world. At least she could erase all the Weasleys….

Ginny pictured herself standing at the door of the establishment and wielding a large board eraser with an evil gleam in her eye, pouncing every time she saw a flash of red hair. _It's a possibility,_ she thought. What made it difficult, though, was that she didn't have the slightest idea of what the Palace even looked like. It was located in Hogsmeade—sort of. It was accessible by a small number of portals close to the "soft places." She did know that much. But of course she'd never _seen_ it; no halfway respectable girl ever did.

_I wonder what it looks like?_

Well, it wasn't as if there was any way to know. It wasn't as if she had photographs lying about, after all. Or… or did she?

Her gaze slid over to the bookshelf. _Origin of Species_ and _The Structure of Evolutionary Theory_ were propped up next to each other, and the scientists were peacefully asleep in two bedrooms they'd set up, each lined with hundreds of books. Stephen Jay Gould was snoring rather loudly. Ginny tiptoed past them. She _really_ didn't want to wake them up. They'd helped her several times that summer with the fine points of different scientific theories, and she'd had some lovely chats with Charles Darwin about the giant tortoises on the Galapagos Islands, and frankly, well, she didn't really want either one of them to know exactly what she was doing. She moved over to _Nature's Nobility: The Extended Edition, _half-hoping that the three patroness authors would haughtily demand what on earth she thought she was doing.

But they were all napping on little beds in the frontispiece photograph, white lace nightcaps on their heads. Ginny opened the book quickly to Appendix X before she could change her mind. There it was. _A Natural History of the Crystal Palace, a Refined Establishment of Pleasure for the Amusement of Purebloods._ She flipped through several pages to a selection of illustrations, and found a full-page etching of a building. She frowned. It couldn't have been more detailed, and yet the longer she stared at it, the less she could have identified anything she was actually looking at. The next page showed close-up interior views, and these seemed much clearer.

Here was one of the elegant rooms where a group of women would wait for clients to make their selection. Ginny looked at the low lighting, the teakwood bar, the elegant cushioned furniture, and the beautiful girls. Music was playing very softly in the background. Now she was one of them, circulating around the group, a drink in her hand, smiling encouragingly at the nervous ,tongue-tied young boy standing in the middle of the floor. Or—no. She wouldn't have to smile, or wink at him, or crook her finger. He'd look at her, and he'd know. He would come to her. He would choose her. Ginny turned the page.

Now she was leading him down one of the long, dimly lit corridors, the torches high in the red-papered walls casting little pools of orange light on the polished wooden floor. He was stumbling over his own feet. When she glanced back at him, he looked terrified, and half- ready to bolt, and desperate with his unquenchable need for her. She turned another page.

They had stopped at a little door. She heard his heavy, uneven breathing as she drew the key out; it was on a golden chain round her neck. She bent forward and unlocked the door, and he pushed it open. He gave a little cry, and she saw that his fingers were bleeding from some sort of sharp point set into the door. He shook his head at her questioning look, _no, no_, he was perfectly fine. He stepped into the room and she did as well, and then he suddenly, unsteadily stepped forward and put his arms round her waist, and kissed her, his mouth eager and inexperienced and anxious, and his hands were everywhere and she pushed him back, _sh, sh, not quite yet. You must learn patience, you know_. His utterly beautiful face fell. And oh, he was so beautiful and young and perfect that she couldn't be cruel to him, even though she had half wanted to be. A tremendous tenderness rose in her, and she smoothed his silvery hair with her hands. He closed his gray eyes and leaned against her chest, and she felt him trembling with the force of desire for her. _Draco, Draco,_ she thought, and as petals fell from a great vase on the table, and the subtle, exquisite scent of roses filled the air, sweeter than all the gardens in the world—

Ginny's head jerked up. She slammed the book and looked at it in something like terror. "What perfectly uncivilized behavior—" Princesse de Lieven began to say indignantly, just before Ginny crammed _Nature's Nobility_ into the very back of the closet shelf, right beside the portrait of the sixteen-year-old Draco. Then she collapsed into bed, her heart racing frantically.

_What in the hell just happened?_

Ginny had no answer. She didn't want one. Deep down, she knew that she didn't want to _try_ to find one. But even before she began, she knew exactly what she was going to do.

Quickly, before she had a chance to change her mind, she stripped off her plain white pyjamas and her serviceable flowered knickers.

_We didn't. But we might have. We could have._

The pleasure was building; her body was readying itself. One more thing would send her over the edge. Just one more…

_If I had asked him again, at the cottage… if I had begged him just one more time… If I had given in on Vendetta Island, when he begged me… If I had taken his hand and let him lead me into the room in the chamber, on the night of the art opening at Bas Bleu… then it would have happened. We would have become lovers. I would have that, at least._

She cried out, reaching out for someone who wasn't there at all. It was the night she had stood over Draco as he slept on the sofa in the cottage at Lyme Bay and she had touched him for the first time, when he wasn't as unknowing as he pretended to be. It was her dream of him and her on the bearskin before the fire when she was cold and alone and rain-soaked, and terrified because Lucius Malfoy had tried to kidnap her, and she had clung to him and begged him to make love to her, because that night was all they had and they would hate each other in the morning. It was the night that her body was on fire and she screamed at him for release, and he tormented her with desire before setting her free with unimaginable delight, opening her body to the sensual world for the first time. It was the night she had gone to him on Vendetta Island, using the Succubus spell in desperation, letting him guide her even further through the corruption of her innocence. And it was their last kiss in the corridor of the mysterious chamber, when the sweetness of his lips had been the saddest thing in the world, and she had known, even before she really knew, that he was soon to leave her.

And yet… and yet the pleasure was sumptuous, and it was all hers.

She pulled a comforter over herself, knowing that she didn't understand anything that had happened that night. _How strange, though,_ she thought drowsily. _I still don't regret anything. I'm still not sorry that it happened the way it did. I couldn't have Draco, so I chose to give him up, and I'd make the same choice again. I wonder what it all means… _

Ginny woke up just once, in the darkest part of the night. Something white was blowing at the edge of her field of vision. She blinked. It was the gauze curtain on the open window. _I really should get up and shut it. Why did I leave the window open, anyway?_ She had already started to get up when she realized that she didn't have a window on that side of the room. Also, she'd never had a gauze curtain, or a white one. It had to be a dream.

She looked round curiously. The room looked perfectly normal, but something clearly was wrong. So what was it? She kept scanning the room. The dresser looked all right, the wardrobe, the closet, the bathroom, the door…

That was it. The door. It was open, and Ginny never, ever left the bedroom door open. She sat up and pushed back the covers.

Draco Malfoy was standing there, of course.

"How did you get in—" she began to ask, and then she stopped. It obviously wasn't going to do any good to ask him anything. Even though he looked as if he were only a few feet away from her, he was at almost an infinite distance. He couldn't possibly hear her. And yet he was coming closer. He wasn't moving, but somehow, he was coming from very, very far away, and always, always closer, as if he were coming by a hard road, and a long one. But still, he was coming to her.

She couldn't hear him, because he was much too far away, and yet she could. "_Ginny,_" he said, and she did hear that. He held out his long, white hand.

Then he disappeared, and the next time she opened her eyes, it was morning.

**Author notes:** BTW, authentic mincement actually does require a _calf's head._


	41. The Search Begins

A/N: Thanks to all readers.

+++-

October 4, 2001

Ginny paced restlessly across the floor. An enormous yawn threatened to split Colin's face in half. "I hope you have a good reason for calling me out at such an ungodly hour, Gin," he said. "News about an important art patron, or a piece of juicy gossip about somebody's private sex life—not yours, of course, I've already given up on that—or shocking revelations of _some_ sort, anyway—"

"Colly, I've thought and I've thought, and you're the only one who I could possibly help me now," she interrupted.

"I'm very flattered," he said. "I'd be even more flattered if I'd had any breakfast." He tried to peered round her into the kitchen. "Do you have any bagels in there?"

She cut him off again, with an impatient wave of her hand. "This is serious! I've got to know something first. Can you keep what I tell you a secret?"

"Of course I can."

"I mean it. You can't let out even the slightest hint. No pillow talk with Tony."

"You don't trust me," said Colin, looking wounded. "It's because I told Ron you stole his slice of treacle tart at lunch during third year at Hogwarts, isn't it?"

"No, Colly! It's because there can't be even the slightest hint of this getting out. I mean it."

"Then I'd be silent as the grave," said Colin. "You've got to know that I would, Gin."

"I know," said Ginny, feeling a little ashamed. She dropped into a chair.

"So what's the big secret, then?" Colin leaned over the table. "Time to dish."

She gnawed on her lower lip. "I don't have the right to burden you with this, really."

"You're trying to drive me mad, aren't you? Why couldn't you have done this to _Luna_? She's constantly vying with me for the title of best friend, you know."

"I couldn't," sighed Ginny. "There are a few reasons why not, but…let's just say that if I tell Luna, then Blaise Zabini might get wind of it, and _there's_ someone who can't keep a secret. If he let even one hint drop where the Ministry might catch it, then he'd be under instant suspicion. I can't do that to him."

Colin looked at her shrewdly. "It's got something to do with Draco Malfoy, doesn't it?"

Ginny sank her head down on her folded hands. He'd already figured out too much, as she probably should have known that he would do, she thought drearily. "I shouldn't have said anything at all," she mumbled.

"Yes, you should," said Colin. "Don't try to carry this alone, Gin. Talk to me." He lifted up her chin with one hand.

She swallowed hard. Gods, where to start? She knew what the end would be, and she knew just how little right she had to ask Colin what she would ask him then. She was all too afraid that he would do it because he was her friend, and that it was the worst thing she could expect a friend to do. But she'd spent the long hours until dawn pacing the floor of her bedroom, coming to this decision. She couldn't back down now.

"You know that Harry's heading up that St. Mungo's investigation, right?" she asked Colin.

"I've read about it in the _Daily Prophet_. I don't know anything more than anyone else does. Is that what this is about?"

Ginny thought for a moment. "Well, kind of." She outlined the previous day's dinner at the Burrow until Colin was all but rolling on the floor with laughter.

"You ought to have invited me. I'm horribly hurt that you didn't. Spam and lima bean casserole! I suppose I'll never get to taste it now."

"Oh, Colin, forget about the Spam."

"I can't. I need to know if this means that we can never eat Spam again. Because I had a lovely recipe, Gin. It's very cruel of you to not let me try making Spam treacle tart. I could make up for that third-year incident, you know."

"Colin, _really_. I suppose that Mum did try, at least, and… and they've done a good job of recreating the Burrow as it used to be." Ginny swallowed past a sudden lump in her throat. "She even had all the old pictures in an album. They did manage to save those. I took one to keep—see?" She fumbled in her purse and held it up. It was a small print of the old photograph from the summer before Ginny's second year, when the entire Weasley family had visited the pyramids in Egypt. They all waved happily for the camera. "Anyway, there's a great deal more."

He sobered instantly. "Sorry, Gin. If Harry really's got some insane idea into his head that you could possibly be connected with Malfoy, then that could be quite serious; your brothers are right to worry. Well, except that you _can't_ have any connection with him. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Right?"

Ginny gulped. "That's the tricky part. "I, uh… I had a dream about Draco Malfoy last night." Colin really didn't need to know all the gory details, she decided, and they weren't what counted, anyway. She was dismally aware that she couldn't really describe the eerie, haunting quality of what had happened, but she tried as hard as she could, looking fixedly at the table the entire time. When she was done, Colin gave a long, low whistle.

"Well, I certainly see why you couldn't tell anyone in your family. I can just imagine how happy Ron would be at _that_ particular bit of news. 'Oh, by the way, brother dear, I know that Harry's on the warpath because he thinks I'm sneaking round with Malfoy, and the slightest hint that I'm doing anything of the sort will bring the Department of Mysteries down on my head _tout de suite_, but I just happened to have a spooky dream about tall, blond, and very well-built. He was coming into my bedroom last night, you see, and—where _are_ you going with that Razor hex?'"

Ginny couldn't help smiling. "More or less. I'm sure that Mum would be overjoyed as well."

"Yes, somehow I can't quite imagine Molly Weasley inviting Draco Malfoy to pop round for a spot of tea," said Colin. "So you decided to tell me." His eyes grew warm. "I'm glad, Ginny."

_You probably won't be in about thirty seconds,_ she thought. "Colly, you haven't heard the worst yet."

"What? Did Malfoy show up this morning in your closet? And you're really saying that would be the _worst_?"

"I… no. He didn't show up anywhere. But I've been thinking about nothing but this for three days, and I realized that there's only one thing I can do." She swallowed hard. She couldn't tell Colin everything. She couldn't say that she'd spent three sleepless nights waiting to hear something from Draco, or something about him, until she finally came to her decision.

"I have to try to find out what's really going on, Colly, or I'll never have peace of mind again. I have to learn if that dream was real—if it meant anything, I should say, if it was like the ones I used to have—" She stopped herself. "Never mind. Or if it was nothing more than a dream."

He propped his head up in his hands. "You're not telling me everything, are you?"

"I'm trying to protect you," Ginny said honestly. "I don't want you to know more than you absolutely need to. Colly, this is dangerous, or it could be. If you decide that you don't want to take the risk of helping me, I won't hold it against you, I promise."

He was silent for a long moment. "I think I've always known that I was bent," he said. "But even when men are completely sure about what their preferences are, a good many of them seem to get stuck on the question of whether they really _are_ preferences—that is, a choice—or if that sort of thing is inborn, as unchangeable as blood and bones. More so for wizards, actually, because those _can_ be changed, and if Column B is true, then being queer couldn't be. I've always known that it's what I am. I've never had any doubt at all. And there's one reason why." He looked at her so questioningly that Ginny felt obliged to say something.

"Um… okay, I'll bite, Colly. Why have you always been so sure?"

He put his hand over hers. It felt very warm. "Because if I really did have any choice, I would have chosen you, Ginny. I would have loved you in that way. We'd probably be in your bedroom right now doing all sorts of incredibly naughty things—oh, don't worry, I'm not going to suddenly pull a Dean Thomas on you, wanting what I simply can't have. I _don't_ want those things from you, because I'm not put together that way. I've tried shagging girls a few times, and it's always been quite dreadful. I'd never do that to you. I think…" He hesitated. "I think that I might love Tony, one day; we'll hardly at that point yet after four months. But now, the only person I've ever truly loved is you, Gin. I love you with all my heart and mind and spirit, just not with my body. Anyone who says there's no such thing as platonic love really needs to look into my head, and then they'd understand it. So I'd do anything for you. There's no risk I wouldn't run—oh, don't _cry_!" He looked horrified.

"I can't help it," she sniffled. "Colly, you didn't tell me any of this back in May when I threw myself at you so that I could break the no-sex curse."

"I couldn't. I suppose it was because I didn't want to make you all uncomfy." He looked rather uncomfy himself, he thought.

"You're too good for me," she said.

"No, I'm not," he sighed. "That was a lie. It was because I knew you didn't really want to have sex with _me_; you just wanted to break the curse. Do you think I was going to make a confession of purely platonic love after that?"

She thought about that. "I can't blame you. Colly, I think… I think I love you in the same way. I never would've believed it's possible to love anyone as a friend, but I do. And I still think I don't deserve you."

"Of course you don't, any more than I deserve you. Imagine if we all got what we really deserved."

Ginny smiled crookedly. "Oh, I know what I'd get, all right. I'd be haunted by Draco Malfoy, and he'd have disappeared without a trace."

"I do wonder about something, Ginny," Colin said quietly. "It'll never go outside this room, if you want to tell me. He meant something to you, didn't he?"

"I can't tell you," said Ginny. "I can't even tell myself. Colly, I'm mad to drag you into this."

"Possibly, but then I'm mad as well, because I'm going to help you no matter what. Now you're crying _harder._ I don't even have a Kleenex. Can I use a sheet of this paper?"

"No, you can't! That's Strathmore hot-press drawing paper and it cost a whole galleon for just ten pads of it. Put it back." Ginny wiped her nose with her hand.

"Fine." Colin leaned back. "Are you planning to put on the espresso now so we can make it through the long haul that awaits? You'll never make me believe that you're done telling me all the dirty secrets."

"The worst one's still to come." She took a deep breath. "There's only one person who might be able to help me find out the truth, Colly. I think I've known deep down that I'd have to find her since the minute I learned about that St. Mungo's investigation."

"Her?"

"Daphne Greengrass." There! She had said it.

Colin raised his eyebrows. "Astoria's sister? Shouldn't she be pretty much _persona non grata_ as far as you're concerned?"

"Not exactly. I wouldn't say that we're best friends, but…" How on earth to explain this one? "She's helped me in the past," Ginny said lamely. "She's the only one who can help me now, and she's going to, whether she wants to or not! No, Colly." She held her hand up, palm out. "I won't tell you anything more. The less you know about Daphne, the better off you are. But I need to find her, and I've owled her over and over for three days now. Every single one flies around in confused circles and then comes back. I haven't seen her since the beginning of June. It was the art opening, actually."

"Hmm. Well, you've picked the correct friend to act as private detective, and that's a fact. As your personal assistant, event planner, interference runner, glorified errand-boy, appointment planner and official getting-rid-of-highly-annoying-people bodyguard type, I know everybody who's anybody, and everybody who isn't anyone in particular, as well." Colin's brow puckered in thought. "You know, I don't think anybody else has seen Daphne Greengrass for quite a long time, either. She doesn't have a very high social profile, but she'd be expected to attend the Pureblood Regency Ball … of course, that hasn't happened yet; it's scheduled for the start of December this year. But she's normally seen at least at a few charity events over the summer, and an important dinner or three. She might have been at some fashionable resort or other for several months, I suppose; those are sometimes Shielded from owls."

"I doubt it," said Ginny. "The Greengrasses are land-rich but very cash-poor, and after that greedy bitch Astoria got her hands on the Malfoy money, she wouldn't be likely to share it with her sister. They don't get along at all."

Colin stared at her. "And just how did you pick up this inside info? Do you know how many gossip columnists would kill to get their hands on it? Rita Skeeter would happily sell her own grandmother into slavery for even a snippet of that."

"Uh—from Dr—I mean Malfoy. Back in May." Ginny hoped that she wasn't blushing. It certainly _felt_ like she was blushing.

Colin sighed. He understood more than he ever let on, thought Ginny. _Just like Luna. Oh, how I wish I could tell her about this. But Daphne was actually at Blaise Zabini's flat! If the Ministry ever got wind of what I'm doing, I'd be responsible for dragging both Luna and Blaise into a mess they might never get out of again._ She felt another attack of conscience. "Maybe you could just look about a bit for her, Colly, or ask a question or discreetly. Or on second thought, don't do it at all. Meanwhile, I'll look everywhere I can think of, and then—"

"You'll do nothing. You'll keep your mouth shut, you'll look innocent, and you'll wait to hear from me. I'll find the disappeared Daphne," he said. "I just hope you know what you're doing, Gin."

She tried to smile. "I don't, Colly," she said. "I don't pretend to. But I've got to do it anyway."

As he was about to go out the door, he turned back. "By the way, Gin, are you getting anywhere with the new sketches? Zen wants to know if you'll have anything ready to show for that Halloween party."

"I haven't been able to do a thing," said Ginny. "Maybe later." _Maybe never,_ she thought. She felt wrung dry of art, like a squeezed-out rag.

October 11, 2001

_Colly,_

Have you heard anything yet? I'm just starting to wonder. It's been an entire week, and—  


Ginny crumpled up the letter into a tiny ball and threw it on the floor. She'd known before she even took out a quill that she couldn't possibly send it.

She had a pleasant dinner with Dean at a little café. He was friendly and warm. As always, she knew that he wanted more than friendship, and that a world of heat lay behind his warmth for her. She kept clenching and unclenching her fists until there were little red half-moons carved into her palms.

Ginny knew that if she allowed him to linger at her door when he took her back to her flat, he would give her a goodnight kiss. She remembered how good Dean's kisses had been when she was fifteen years old, and how ashamed she felt because she had used him to get to Harry. She didn't want Dean, not really, but the pain of wanting what she didn't have weighed more heavily on her by the day. There was something within her, frustrated, agonized, stirring as painfully as a stopped-up volcano, and she was struggling not to let it loose. She slipped quickly inside, leaving him standing in the hallway.

At her studio, she picked up a drawing pencil and pulled it across a piece of cold-press paper, feeling the slight catch of the toothed surface catch on the pencil's tip. Nothing came to her. Her mind seethed and bubbled with frustration. She had no dreams at all that night. But when she woke up in the morning, she'd torn the hem of her nightgown to shreds.

October 18, 2001

"Are you all right?" asked Luna.

"Fine," snapped Ginny.

Luna looked at her friend's hands. "You've bitten all your nails off. Your fingers are starting to bleed."

"I said that I'm _fine_!"

"It's all right, you know," Dean said softly in her ear, a few hours later.

"Mm-hm," she said, wishing that she knew exactly what she was assenting to. She hadn't been able to make coherent sense out of anything that had been said for at least half an hour now.

All of her brothers had left her flat only a few minutes ago. They'd shared information about what was going on with Harry and the Ministry, and the consensus seemed to be that while nobody had heard anything, there was no way to know what might be going on behind the scenes. However, Harry would be obliged to act according to protocol now, and he couldn't move against her without any proof at all, as he done in May. Ginny was sure that it all made a great deal of sense and was extremely logical and well-thought-out. She was sure that everyone wanted only the best for her. She was sure that even one more word would have driven her stark raving mad, and that she would have run screaming from the room and out into the cool October night, her brothers chasing her all the way and probably throwing her into St. Mungo's before she got very far.

"You're safe, Gin," Dean went on." Harry's no fool. He knows that he'd have to have some sort of proof that you and Malfoy really are connected before he could move against you."

"Oh. Right." _Something else. There was something else I was going to say. I can't keep my mind on anything at all. This seemed important, though…_ "Uh… but what about when he said that he wanted to tell me about what he'd learned back in May? About the Malfoys, I mean?"

Dean shrugged. "Who knows? He said that he couldn't prove anything except that Draco Malfoy had been holding back a good chunk of money, and that he'd been clever enough about it so that the Ministry couldn't nail him on anything."

"Maybe he's trying to get Malfoy on something else." _Something that would cause him to show up in my bedroom at three in the morning, that would make him reach out his hand to me and say my name, say,'Ginny, Ginny, wait for me…' No. He didn't say it then._

"Yeah, maybe he is. I wouldn't be a bit surprised. I'll tell you one thing—if I were Draco Malfoy, I wouldn't set foot in London again for anything, not if the Ministry offered to double the Galleons in the Malfoy vault at Gringotts. And I don't think they've got the resources to do it." He picked up one of her hands and traced the lines on it. "Ginny, Harry can't get at you as long as you don't do anything stupid. You're not going to, are you?"

She forced a smile. It felt like the hardest thing she had ever done. "Me? Do something stupid? I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."

Dean chuckled. He'd done that a bit earlier, Ginny remembered, as well as she could remember anything when it had felt so thoroughly as if she were ready to go mad at any moment. At the low, intimate sound, Ron had glanced over and given a small, grudgingly approving smile. Ron would have preferred her to take a vow of eternal celibacy and swear off the mere possibility of sex for this life and all incarnations beyond, of course. But if it were absolutely necessary for her to be partnered with some man on the planet, she was perfectly aware that Ron would at least be able to live with the choice of Dean Thomas. Actually, she knew that all of her brothers liked Dean. She could feel their glow of warm approval whenever they saw the two of them together, and she knew what they were all assuming. Both Charlie and Bill had been informed by owl and had been chiming in on the happy chorus since July. Her mother was, of course, the lone, tight-lipped holdout, and her father was strangely silent about the entire thing. Dean was more than happy to allow all of the assumptions to stand.

Ginny had never been happy about it, but she'd always allowed it anyway, vowing constantly that _this_ was the week when she'd tell Dean exactly where they really stood. The plain fact was that they had never actually shared more than a few chaste goodnight kisses, but she knew that he wanted more, so much more. And Ginny didn't see how she could ever have anything more to give to anybody. Lately, she wasn't at all sure that she even had enough for herself.

"Have you been working on anything new for that Halloween show?" asked Dean, breaking in on her thoughts.

"I—what?" Ginny blinked. "No. I just can't, right now."

Dean looked at her, rather intently, she thought. _Oh, gods, how I hope he doesn't know anything about why I can't!What does he really know, what does he really suspect about me and Draco? I've never given Dean enough credit for understanding things._ "Well, maybe you will in a few days. I know how hard you can work, once inspiration hits… Ron's right, you know. There's got to be a way to prove that Malfoy can't possibly have any sort of remaining connection with you. I mean… he _doesn't_… does he?"

"Of course he doesn't," she said.

"Then we'll find that proof, and we'll force Harry to lay off you for good. He can keep up that St. Mungo's shite as long as he wants, but it'll have nothing more to do with you." He cupped his hand all the way around hers. "I'd never let Harry hurt you, Gin. No matter what. He's done that enough already. I'll always protect you, if I can. You do know that, don't you?" He moved closer to her.

"I do," said Ginny. "But, Dean— I can't-"

"Hush." He put a finger over her lips. Then he replaced it with a kiss as light as a single beat of a butterfly's wing. "I know, Gin. I know."

_Colin,_

Why the hell haven't I heard anything from you? I'm going mad. I'm just sitting here and waiting for hear something from you, anything. I can't just sit and do nothing. It's not in my nature. If you don't contact me soon, I'm going to—

Ginny crumpled that note into a wad and stomped on it. She had no right to send it to Colin, quite aside from how dangerous it would be to him. She'd never had any right to drag him into this in the first place.

A knock came at the door of her studio very late that night.

"Whoever it is, I'm not home," she said loudly, not even bothering to get up. Colin wouldn't have knocked; he would have found some other way to contact her by now, if he was going to.

The door swung open. "Are you going to have anything ready at all for that art opening?" demanded an unfamiliar voice. "I don't see a thing. Do you have the drawings somewhere else, or whatever they are? Are they put away? You'd better have them, Ginevra Weasley. I'm not allowing you to let Zen down like that."

She swung round to confront a tall, gangling young man who was currently scowling at her from the doorway. His dark blond hair fell over his eyes, his arms were crossed, and he looked thoroughly unpleasant. Vaguely familiar, too. She racked her brains but couldn't seem to come up with his name.

"Well?" he asked, an edge to his voice.

The volcano stirred, and a sort of mean energy flooded through Ginny. Here was an enemy to confront , at least. She jumped to her feet, striding to the door. "I don't see that it's any business of yours, and you'd better get out of my flat," she said, hands on her hips.

"It's entirely my business. And I'm not in your flat. I'm in the corridor. You don't own the corridor."

"You have _one foot_ over the threshold." Ginny stabbed a finger down at the offending member. "Out!"

"Nothing doing! I'm not going anywhere until you promise to deliver some art on October 31st. A sculpture, a sketch, a crayon drawing on construction paper if you can't do any better—but it looks like you haven't even tried to do a thing."

_How the fuck does he know?_ wondered Ginny, starting to feel rather panicky. "That's it. You're absolutely mad. You obviously escaped from a back ward of St. Mungo's, whoever you are."

"Aha! So you don't deny it. You really don't have anything. Why not? You'd better answer me."

The volcano bubbled up. " For your information—not that you deserve to know- if I never want to create another piece of art, then I won't, and you can just naff off!"

He leaned in, towards her. "No. That won't do. You said you'd have something ready by Halloween, Ginevra, and that's only two weeks away. So why don't you?"

"Because—because- maybe I just don't _want_ to do art anymore!" yelled Ginny. Then she clapped her hand over her mouth, horrified.

"Hmmph." He shook his head. "And my sister thinks that you have talent."

Ginny remembered Astoria trying to whisper to a tall, thin Auror in an alley behind _Bas-Bleu_ back in May, and the light dawned on her at last. "You're Zacharias Smith."

"Zen also thinks that you have at least a smidgen of intellect." He rolled his eyes.

Ginny flopped back into her chair. "Did Zenobia send you to torture me, Zacharias?"

"No. And since I suspect that this won't be the last time we exchange words, you might as well call me Zach."

"Fine. _Zach_, then. She did, didn't she?"

Zach shook his head. "Oh, no. I came here entirely on my own account. But I meant everything I said. You've got the talent, Ginevra—"

"Call me Ginny."

"I'll call you what I want. You can deliver, if you really want to. So get off your arse and do it." He looked at her pointedly, shoved his foot quite deliberately over the threshold, and then stepped back and slammed the door.

It didn't occur to her until long after Zach's footsteps had clattered down the stairs that he shouldn't have been able to step into her Shielded flat at all. She certainly hadn't invited him in. She made an awful face at the closed door, which did nothing to relieve her feelings. Then she picked up a charcoal pencil and stabbed it so hard into a pad of newsprint paper that she broke the tip. Unfortunately, that represented the height of her artistic accomplishment for the day.

October 25, 2001

Ginny ripped another sheet off a pad of Canson drawing paper. She methodically tore it into long, narrow shreds, top to bottom. Then she scrunched each one up into a tiny ball and threw it violently on the floor. Occasionally, she tossed down a piece of charcoal and stomped on it.

Three weeks, and nothing from Colin. Three weeks, and no dreams about Draco.

_Scrunch. Stomp._

A few more minutes, of course, and Dean was supposed to come over. "I have something to tell you," he'd said when he'd called only a little while ago, sounding tense and almost afraid. Well, she had nothing to tell him. She had nothing at all to offer to him, or to anyone else.

_Scrunch. Stomp._

_The silvery-haired boy in the room filled with the scent of roses, clasping her close to him and shuddering with the power of his desire for her. And he was Draco, she'd known it then, the sixteen-year-old Draco in the portrait, even though she couldn't imagine how or when or why this vision had come to her. And then she had seen the Draco of the present day, the one who had begun those seventeen days in Mayas nothing to her, a careless, callous, smiling playboy, all sunshine and tennis and smooth, flippant surface, his dicey past thoroughly smoothed over by all the Malfoy cash. He had ended them as her shining devil and her dark angel, drawing her ever further into his shimmering web. She had gone with him, entranced, caught in a spell of voluptuous enchantment that only he knew how to weave, and it had been her greatest pleasure. She had done it willingly, and that was now her greatest shame. She had swayed beneath his onslaught of passion and pleasure, desire and danger, longing and loss and fire and fury. When she saw him standing in the doorway of her bedroom at the studio, holding out his hand to her, moving towards her from some impossible distance, she would have gone with him again. _

The knowledge make her want to wring Draco Malfoy's exquisitely shaped neck. What fucking _right_ did he have to torture her this way, to torment her with vague dreams and visions just when she'd started to painfully rebuild her life without him?

_Stomp stomp STOMP!_

"If Draco Malfoy was here right now," she muttered, "If I could just get my hands on him, just one more time. I'd…"

Ginny stopped. A kaleidoscope of images from four months before ran through her mind. The volcano surged.

Quite suddenly, she threw the entire pad of paper right across the room. At the same moment, the door opened.

"Ow!" whined Colin. "What the hell did I do?"

Ginny gaped at him. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Never mind that! It would take much too long to explain. " He grabbed her hand. "Ginny, we've got to hurry. I've found Daphne Greengrass—well, sort of—but you've got to come quick. Otherwise, we're going to lose her any second. You don't know how long I've been waiting for this chance and I couldn't let you know I was skulking around in the street like a cutrate _Law and Order_ detective—"

"You mean you've been right downstairs this entire time? Colin Creevey, I am going to smack you into the middle of next week—"

"Yes, well, Tuesday next will just have to wait. Didn't you hear me? I've found Daphne! I know exactly where she is, and I know why she's been hiding for the past four months as well. And you're right, Gin—this has _everything_ to do with Draco Malfoy!"

The words penetrated Ginny's consciousness at last.

"What are we waiting for? Let's go!" She grabbed Colin by the wrist and started dragging him downstairs.

"I _knew_ this was going to work out. I absolutely—knew- that all my hard work was going to pay off- in the end," panted Colin. "You can't imagine—what an utter pain in the arse—this was, but we've finally _got_ her, and—nothing can—go wrong now— " He peered ahead and yanked harder. "Oh, fuck! Yes, it can."

"What? Why? What's wrong? Where is she?"

"Up—there," Colin pointed a finger at a shadowy figure as they ran."But there's a—problem, Gin—Dean Thomas is chasing her, too!"

He was. She saw him, saw the incredulous look in his eyes as he saw her pursuing the same quarry he was. She was pretty sure she heard him mouth the words _Ginny, what are you doing? Ginny, stop, you don't understand-_

No, she didn't understand, but she saw Daphne Greengrass running like a fast shadow ahead of her, darting from tree to tree on the dark street.

"Where, where are we going? Where are we chasing her?" she shouted.

"That connection point—the one up ahead—"

"The one that goes to the Crystal Palace?" Ginny asked incredulously. That was the one her _brothers_ had taken only a few weeks before!

"Yes, yes—I'll explain later—"

Colin looked ready to drop. Ginny pulled him mercilessly along; she'd carry him on her back if she had to, she thought grimly. Daphne looked back at her, and her face was twisted with something almost like fear. She picked up speed; she was almost to the connection point. It looked nothing like a normal Apparition point; the air itself was beginning to waver and swirl in response to Daphne's clear determination, and she had almost reached its outer edges.

_She thinks she's going to make it there before we are! Oh, no she isn't._

_This has everything to do with Draco Malfoy…_

His shadowy figure, standing in her bedroom door. His beckoning hand. The mystery of his disappearance, of his silence, of everything implacable and inscrutable that was Draco.

The volcano in Ginny erupted, and overflowed. She put on a burst of incredible speed, and she grabbed Daphne Greengrass's hand just as she was jumping into the connection point. The last thing she heard was Colin's voice.

"Ouch! Now you're stepping on my foot. I hope you're happy. Gin, how the hell do I always manage to get myself into these things when I'm around you?"


	42. The Return

/N:Thanks to all the reviewers. I've started posting here again, but it IS finished elsewhere.

I will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent as I then was, to your destruction and infallible misery. Learn from me, in not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge.

- Mary Shelley, _Frankenstein_

"Oof!"

Something unyielding was rushing up at meet Ginny, and she realized it just a moment too late. She tried to turn, to avoid whatever it was, to curl into herself, but all of her attempts were hopeless, and she ended up sprawled ungracefully on her stomach, gasping for air. Her cheek was pressed against something cold and hard. _Like stone. Oh, wait. It actually is stone._ She raised her head and looked round her. She was lying on the floor of a long, dimly lit corridor, and she was alone. Both Colin and Daphne had disappeared.

Her head swam. Where _was_ she? They'd entered through a connection portal, and she knew for a fact that her brothers had taken it to the Crystal Palace. It was where Colin must have meant to go, even though she couldn't imagine why it would make any sense for him to have tracked Daphne there. These portals responded to the strongest desire in a group, so the Crystal Palace was where they all had to be… didn't it? She struggled into a standing position and peered around. The corridor was long and dimly lit, with shabby walls and a low, grimy ceiling. The Crystal Palace was expensively furnished in every imaginable way, its elegant refinements of hand-rubbed teak and silk-covered walls and inlaid marble floors perfect in every detail. Ginny's brows knitted. None of this made sense. This setting hardly seemed likely to appeal to any client's odd kink.

_When I walked through the halls as a companion and led Draco by the hand, they certainly didn't look a bit like this…_

She shook her head impatiently. That couldn't have been anything more than a fantasy she'd had when rifling through _Nature's Nobility_, and it had probably all been brought on by a lack of sleep. But it was true that the engravings of the Crystal Palace in Appendix X didn't match what she was seeing now. These corridors looked almost… _familiar._ If she squinted her eyes, and looked around a corner just so…

Slowly, Ginny began to walk down the stone corridor, her footsteps echoing in the air. Yes. If she rounded this corner, she'd find another sharp turn to the left, and the floor would slant down a bit. It did, of course.

_You'll be perfectly all right, Ginny dear. I'm sure that you'll only need to stay for a very short time. The mediwizards will take such good care of you. And we'll come to visit you as often as we can, said her mother._ But her family hadn't come to visit her at all.

She turned to the right, knowing that it was the correct way to go. She'd gone this way before.

The voices of the aides, whispering, hissing, gossiping. They'd thought that she couldn't hear them, but she'd known where to hide, and she'd caught every word. _Yes, the examination was done this morning. It was good news, I suppose. That filthy thing wasn't able to take shape enough to even touch her body, although he certainly would have done if he could have. What a blessing that is, at least. Some of these pureblood families set such a store on purity for their girls, you know… and the poor dear thing is only eleven years old, just imagine if the worst had happened… Psst stt bzz bzz. Oh yes, I should think that her family will still keep it a secret from everyone. I'm sure she'll do the same. Imagine if any of her future boyfriends ever found out. Nobody would ever believe that she hadn't been violated in that shameful way. Of course, what did happen was dreadful enough…_

The corridor wound round and round in a complex pattern. Ginny did not miss a step.

She had gone here to hide during that summer, sometimes, when she needed to be alone. When the nightmare threatened to overcome her. _She lay on the floor, bound and helpless, and he stood above her. Such a silly little girl, Ginevra. Unripe fruit, nothing more, he hissed. What sport could you possibly have been for him, even if he could touch you now? But all things ripen, in time, and that is why I could not allow Tom to have you. Do you know now for whom I have always kept you? For Draco. For my son. You will ripen. You will be ready for him. Then she would look up, and Tom Riddle would have turned into Lucius Malfoy-_

Ginny stopped, and she did look up now. She had wandered a long way. She should have been hopelessly lost, thoroughly confused. But she wasn't. If she turned right, then left, then right again, then followed a little passageway down, and then negotiated a little flight of stairs, then turned sharply into a hidden little niche that nobody would ever be able to find unless they'd once been a patient at St. Mungo's, then she would be at the secret entrance to the psychiatric ward, the one she'd found during that summer.

Oh, yes. She knew _exactly_ where she was.

She wasn't in the Crystal Palace. She was in the winding tunnels that led to St. Mungo's.

She wandered down the corridor very slowly. The truth washed over her slowly, slowly, as if she were waking from a nightmare and finding it to be real. She fit the pieces together, one by one.

They must have all been meant to go to the Crystal Palace. It was the only idea that made sense. It was _her_ presence that had somehow steered them here instead. She'd been trapped here the summer when she was twelve years old, terrified and hating and hurting and despairing, and some part of her was still here and always would be. She moaned in fear, doubling over and holding herself,

_I've done everything wrong again, not even knowing what it was. What have I been missing? What have I not seen?_

Ginny looked up briefly and saw another empty corridor. _Colin. That's who I'm not seeing. Where the hell did he go? I haven't seen him since I got here. What's happened to him? Is he all right? Is he…_ She stopped.

_Stupid! Stupid._

The Department of Mysteries was investigating St. Mungo's, with all the force of the Ministry behind it. Harry had managed to get himself appointed to head it up. He was putting all his implacable force and anger into it because he was convinced that Draco Malfoy was somehow behind whatever had been happening there. And by begging Colin to track down Daphne Greengrass for her, she'd blithely sent her friend into this unbelievable danger. Why hadn't she _known_ that it all had to end up somehow connected to St. Mungo's? Or how couldn't she at least have guessed? It all swept over her with the force of a blow, and she moaned, doubling over.

_Why did I wait in the background? Why did I sit around and hide, and let one of my best friends in all the world take the risk for me? And Colin didn't get a chance to tell me anything that he had to do to find Daphne—it could be even worse than I know!_ At least she hadn't involved Luna, she tried to tell herself, but that was no comfort at all.

Ginny leaned up against a rough spot in the stone wall, still aching horribly. She'd been here too many times during that summer after her second year; it had been one of her favorite places to hide and cry. The thin, sad ghost of that child-self tried to whisper to her now, the one that the happy eleven-year-old in the family photograph that summer in Egypt hadn't known was waiting for her. Its small, desperate fingers clutched at her in weakness. _No hope. No help. Nothing good left in the world. Nobody can ever know… nobody can ever guess what happened here, what happened to you…_

"Stop it!" she shrieked.

and something crackled under her hands and made little indignant sounds. It was smooth and papery, and she took it out.

It was the newspaper clipping she'd snatched from the Burrow a few weeks ago, the copy of the photograph that had been taken the summer after her first year. She looked at her happily waving child-self dully. She felt no connection to that innocent little girl. Photograph-Ginny stopped and looked at her curiously.

"I can't be sure, but I _think_ you're the real grownup version of me," she finally announced.

Ginny nodded.

"So how'd I turn out?"

"You don't want to know."

Photograph-Ginny squinted at her. "We're pretty," she said. "I really like our breasts. I always hoped they'd get much bigger, and nice and round. Just like that."

"I'm glad something turned out well," said Ginny.

"Why are you so sad?"

"I-" It seemed hideously unfair to burden this sunny child with the nightmare that her life was turning out to be, but Ginny couldn't help it. "I've ruined so many things," she blurted out. "I didn't mean it; I never meant it. I don't know how it happened."

Photograph-Ginny reached out with her little black-and-white hand. "Don't cry," she said softly. "You think something's all your fault, don't you?"

"Yes," Ginny choked. _Even before the Chamber of Secrets, I used to think that things were all my fault,_ she thought sadly.

"I'll bet it's not," said photograph-Ginny. "Do you remember that thing we used to do that was sort of awful?"

"Putting Gargantua spells on frogs so they were five feet long and then slipping them into Ron's bed?"

Photograph-Ginny stomped her foot, and her pigtails swirled round her head. "_No_, silly! We used to blame ourself for one thing that was quite stupid and that made us feel horribly bad, so that we didn't have to take responsibility for another thing that really was our fault."

"I do remember that," Ginny said slowly. "I'd forgotten all about it."

"Maybe that's what you're doing now."

"Maybe it is."

Photograph-Ginny jumped up to the frame and gave her finger a little hug. "Don't blame yourself too much, real-Ginny. By the way, do we ever get Harry to like us?"

"Not for very long." Ginny smiled at the child. "And we're much better off that way, believe me."

The newspaper clipping almost fell out of her pocket, but she caught it in time. She hadn't folded it the right way. The photograph-Ginny looked out at her fearfully from the very edge. She hushed the little girl, smoothing her hair and asking her about the pyramids and telling her happy stories about what was going to happen at Hogwarts until she relaxed and started smiling again. Then she kissed her on the forehead and carefully folded the photograph up into thirds, tucking it into her purse.

Ginny leaned against the wall for a few minutes, curving her arms around her own chest, hugging herself. Ginny knew that her arms were going round the photograph-Ginny in the newspaper clipping, too, and she protected the innocent child. _I won't let anything happen to you again,_ she thought. She wasn't even entirely sure, herself, what she meant. But when she lifted her head again, she felt some sort of real peace in her heart that she hadn't known before.

She drummed her fingers against the wall. "What to do, what to do…" she sighed aloud. _There were always more connection portals around here. Maybe I should try to find one… I don't think I should just run about the corridors…_

Footsteps began echoing in the distance. They were coming closer towards her. Someone was coming up _behind_ her. _Colin!_ she thought for an electric instant. But it couldn't be Colin; she realized that just as fast. The steps were too heavy and too slow.

_Well then, who? It certainly isn't Daphne. Who else would be down here? Who would have any reason? Who would be…_

"Harry," she said numbly. Her brain immediately attempted to remind her of the seven million of varieties of fool that she was to not think of this possibility beforehand, but it had too much competition in a series of highly unpleasant images. Harry, watching St. Mungo's. Harry, waiting to catch someone and haul them in front of the Department of Mysteries. Harry, who already suspected her.

Ginny could run. She knew that instantly. Her muscles were already tensed and ready to go. _Pointless,_ her mind whispered. She knew that too. If Harry were here, then so were the full complement of Aurors. She'd been a patient here; she knew these tunnels better than any of them, but one of them was going to catch her sooner or later.

Or… or she could stay right where she was.

In a flash, Ginny saw herself quietly remaining where she was, sedately waiting until Harry pounced. She'd let him catch her. He would triumphantly drag her out of there—she could also do some kicking and screaming, she decided, if that seemed more useful—and he would take her straight to the Ministry. She would have drawn him away from both Colin and Daphne. When questioned, she would insist that she'd come to St. Mungo's on her own. They would have no reason to even think of looking anywhere else that the portal might have led anyone who was helping her. And no matter how much they questioned her about Draco Malfoy, she would have nothing to tell them.

_Not that I care what happens to him anyway!_

Yes, Ginny decided. She would wait. She would offer herself up as the sacrificial lamb. _What a perfectly Gryffindorish thing to do. Well, no… actually, I think it's more of a Hufflepuff sort of thing. It's certainly not Slytherin, because it's hardly very sneaky. I don't think you could assign it to Ravenclaw. It doesn't seem all that clever to me. All right, maybe it's not the best idea I've ever had! But I can't think of anything else just now._

Thoroughly caught in debate with herself, Ginny didn't realize just whose footsteps she was hearing until it was too late.

_At least it's a more noble act than when Ignatius the Ill-Behaved stole the Kleenex of Komikon in 1362 and pretended it was a holy relic that St. Bobagatha had once blown her nose on,_ she was busily arguing with her brain when someone stopped behind her and cleared his throat. Ginny whirled round, and her stomach sank. _I would have been better off running for it._

"Ginny, just what the hell do you think you're _doing_ here?" demanded Dean.

_And there's Unbelievably Idiotic Thing #34573887.9 that you should have realized,_ her brain helpfully informed her. _Of course Dean would've ended up at St. Mungo's after chasing you. He's a mediwizard intern here! _

"Uh—" She opened her mouth and then closed it again.

"I don't know, I don't care, and I'm getting you out of here, " he said. His hand closed on her upper arm in a grip of iron, and he began to drag her towards a corridor that she knew led to an exit.

_Oh, no. No! If Harry really is watching, then he's going to see Dean with me. I'm about to ruin his life, too!_

"Let go of me!" Ginny squirmed, wriggled, and dug her heels into the floor, all to no avail.

"Nothing doing," Dean said grimly. "Fuck-all do I care what happens to anyone else, but I'm getting _you_ out. No matter what you've done, Ginny, I won't let Harry get hold of you."

"I don't know what you mean," she said, hoping that she sounded at least a tiny bit less insincere than she felt. "I came here completely on my own. This has all been my fault. Nobody else had anything to do with it—"

"Shut it! I've been following Creevey for three bloody weeks! Why do you think I was chasing you?"

"Um… because you said you were going to come over and tell me something, and you thought I was going shoe shopping with Colin instead?" She grabbed at a projection in a wall and clung to it like a limpet. Dean tried to pry her off, but he seemed to give up after about a minute. He glared at her.

"No. It was because I was going to tell you what I learned in the past few weeks, Ginny. Seems redundant now, but I might as well do it anyway. I followed Daphne Greengrass, and I figured out that she had to be going to St. Mungo's regularly through that portal, or at least making the attempt. I was waiting until tonight, because that's when I thought I could actually catch that sly Slytherin bitch doing it. I've even talked to her a few times, I've tried to question her, but she's too clever, and she's never admitted it. She irritates the hell out of me. I'd love to get her on something, oh, just once, I've _love_ to nail her—"

"Wait, wait," said Ginny. "You mean that Daphne really has been going to St. Mungo's all along? It's _always_ been St. Mungo's?"

He stared at her. "Of course it is, and it always has been. Creevey certainly knows that. He's been tailing her as well. I've been spying on _both_ of them, Ginny. But he's been in touch with you all along, hasn't he? It's a clever little game. Although I'm still not completely sure what you were getting out of it."

"Game?" Ginny repeated blankly. "I don't understand. And Colin hadn't owled me in three weeks, Dean; it was driving me mad. He wouldn't explain anything."

He laughed. "Yes, it's bloody awful to get no explanations, isn't it, Ginny? To be blundering about in the dark?"

"I don't underst—"

"You made a fool out of me," Dean said bitterly. "I thought that Creevey was helping Greengrass with her little plots. It never even occurred to me that you knew all about it. But that was it, wasn't it? He was working for you. And all the time I was trying to protect you, Ginny. I protected Creevey during his fact-finding adventures, because if anything had happened to him, all I could think of was how much it would hurt you, and how painful it would already be for you to learn that he'd betrayed you. And now I know that he didn't betray you at all. Harry's been right the entire time. You really _are_ working with Malfoy, aren't you?"

Her heart cramped as the look on Dean's face. _How many times I've already failed him!_ She put a hand on his shoulder. "No, Dean, _no,_" she said softly. "You've got it all wrong. I haven't seen Malfoy since the last time anybody else saw him, when he disappeared at the beginning of June. I don't know if Daphne Greengrass has anything to do with what's going on at St. Mungo's or not; if you want to think I'm the biggest fool walking for not thinking that she probably would, well, that's nothing I haven't realized myself in the past ten minutes or so. But I got Colin to help me find her for my own reasons. They're nothing to do with that. I was a coward to ask him instead of doing it myself. I know that now. But that's all. I didn't know that you were following Colin and Daphne. I wasn't trying to make a fool of you. Please, please believe me, Dean."

He gave a long sigh, and he bent his head down so that it almost touched hers. He did believe her. She saw it in his face, and it hurt her strangely that it was so easy to make him believe.

"But _why_, Ginny? Why did you do this? You're going to bring the entire Ministry down on your head! Colin's too. I damn near caught him two minutes ago; he ran off and he's down at the other end of that tunnel somewhere—I know these a hell of a lot of better than he does; I should, I'm a mediwizard here, there isn't even any point in chasing after him. The tunnels all double back and end up here. If he thinks he can hide from me, he's wrong-"

"You mean he's _here_?" Ginny's voice ended in a squeak.

"Of course they are."

"_They_?"

"Both Colin and Daphne Greengrass," Dean said a little impatiently. "Didn't you see them—well, I suppose not. He came in a split second after you, and she followed just a split second after. My guess is that you ended up in separate corridors. But they're here all right."

"Then I've failed him."

He had moved closer to her, and he was starting to put an arm round her shoulder. "Shh, Gin. Shh."

She shook her head. "Dean, you don't understand. I don't need excuses made for me! You've done that enough, and so have all my brothers. I don't _need_ that now. I've done something wrong, don't you understand?"

He blinked at her. "But Gin, I can't believe that you meant to do anything wrong."

She shook her head. "Dean, you don't understand—"

"No, I don't," he said, "but I do know that you couldn't choose any action that was meant to hurt anyone. You couldn't, Ginny. I just know it. I've always known it. And you'll never convince me that you've chosen to do it now. "

He was right, she thought. And yet… and yet he'd never understand that ignorance was no excuse here. He would continue to make excuses for her.

"They're going to come here, aren't they?" she asked him. "Harry and the Aurors, I mean. If they aren't here already. They've got someone watching St. Mungo's, and they'll realize that all of us are down here. They've got to come."

The beat of silence was answer enough. "Ginny," he whispered in her ear. "I'm not going to allow them to get their hands on you. It won't be easy, but I'll find a way. I won't let you down on this one. I swear I won't."

_But I've let you down,_ she thought. _If they discover you here… Oh gods. Dean, you've always deserved so much better from me than I've ever given you._

He glanced behind them. "Shite!" She twisted round, and just managed to see a slender figure heading away in the distance. _Wait a minute. That can't be an Auror; they wouldn't be running in the opposite direction. Daphne! It's got to be Daphne._

"Come on, Ginny," repeated Dean. He pulled her off the wall, and she suddenly went limp, hanging all his weight off his hand. She prayed that this would work; her only hope was that he hadn't been expecting her little trick, and that maybe…

_Thump._ Startled, he dropped her. She scrambled to her feet. He grabbed at her arms; she wrenched herself away and feinted towards the left. At the last moment, she darted off to the right. Dean was a mediwizard at St. Mungo's, but she gambled that he didn't know these tunnels half as well as she did. During that awful summer, she'd learned every inch of them.

Dean's heavy footsteps followed her, halted, and went back and forth in a confused way. Daphne's pattered ahead of her. Or.. wait. Had there been _two_ more sets? The second one couldn't possibly have been Colin's; they were much too light, just as Daphne's were. No. Ginny decided that there was only one set, and that it had to belong to Daphne. Her eyes narrowed. _She knows her way around here a lot better than I thought she would. What's going on?_ But maybe she still didn't know about the little niche where Ginny used to hide that summer. It was one of a few that she'd discovered herself, and nobody else had ever found her in any of them. She picked up her pace.

Now she could see Daphne ahead of her. There was a corridor slanting sharply downwards just to the right, she remembered. The floor was very rough here. Ginny put on as much speed as she could and managed to grab the back of Daphne's elegant blouse. The other woman struggled to get away, but her foot caught on a loose rock, and she almost fell. Ginny hauled her into the niche and pushed her up against the wall.

"Let _go_ of me, Weasley," snarled Daphne.

_So we're back to last names again. Fine with me!_ "Oh, no." Ginny shook her head. "Not until I get a few answers, Greengrass. Starting with telling me just where the hell you've been since May, _and_ what you've been doing."

"It's none of your business. And you didn't seem very concerned with my whereabouts up until now. What inspired you to worry about my well-being?"

"I'm not worried. You can just take care of yourself. It's because—" Ginny stopped. She was _not_ going to tell Daphne Greengrass all about that dream! "It's because you showed up in my studio at the end of May and announced that you'd had some sort of gloomy vision of death and disaster, and that it somehow involved me, your sister, and Draco Malfoy. Then, you buggered off to gods-know-where for the next four months, not bothering to tell me anything more! Harry's heading up this investigation at St. Mungo's, he thinks that Malfoy has something to do with it, and you _just happen_ to be sneaking round here, probably trying to break in—"

"I am _not_ trying to break in, Weasley—"

"Don't make me laugh. Dean told me that he's caught you doing it loads of times in the past three weeks."

Her face flamed. "Oh, so it's _Dean_, is it? I think I'm starting to understand how you caught me. And to think I was sure that I was being so clever."

"For your information," Ginny said through gritted teeth, "Dean is a friend."

Daphne leaned close to her, and Ginny saw that she was thinner than she'd been at the beginning of the summer. "How nice. And just how are you getting all of this inside information from Dean Thomas, your very close personal friend? Or do I even have to ask?"

"I don't do that kind of thing!" snapped Ginny. "I don't have to."

"How nice that must be," said Daphne. "Imagine being able to hold yourself above it all. But I'm not one of the saintly Weasleys, so I wouldn't know."

_She looks tired,_ Ginny realized. _Exhausted, in fact. I wonder when the last time is that she got a good night's sleep?_ Pity started to well up in her. She pushed it down. Daphne was nothing but an annoying, selfish bitch. She was no better than Astoria.

"You wouldn't know, all right. You don't know anything," she said. "Dean is a friend. He'll never be anything more than a friend. Not that you'd understand much about friendship, I'm sure."

Daphne leaned against the stone wall, as if all the fight had suddenly gone out of her. She gave a brittle laugh. "You're right about that, Weasley," she said. "Because I thought that you were some sort of friend to me."

The two girls sat next to each other in the little niche, the space so small that Daphne's thin hand with bright red nails almost rested on Ginny's knee.

"You didn't write to me," said Daphne. "You didn't send me a single owl."

"You're only half right," said Ginny. "I wrote you letters, Daphne. I tore every single one up and threw it away.

That did shock her. Ginny saw it clearly. "Why?" Daphne asked.

"Because… because you made me think of something. Of someone."

Daphne's hands went to her little black bag in an instinctive gesture, then back again. "I don't dare smoke here. I know it. I could use a fag, though. If Creevey were here, I'd be telling him to shut up and not even think about snickering, I suppose... Whatever made you think of trusting him?"

"I'd trust him with my life," said Ginny.

"It must be nice to have friends like that." Daphne drummed her fingers against the bag. "I was going to contact you, Ginny. I couldn't not do it anymore. But then you put Creevey on my trail, and Dean Thomas was after me, and I got scared. I wasn't sure what was happening anymore."

"You mean it was my own fault?" Ginny gaped at her. "That I could have avoided the last three weeks from hell?"

"I don't think it does much good to talk about whose fault anything is." Daphne shrugged. "I've found you now. You deserve to know everything I know about what's been going on."

She didn't start talking, however, and Ginny began to feel a bit nervous. "Where have you been, Daphne? Colin said he couldn't find anyone who'd even heard where you were."

Daphne shrugged. "I'm not surprised. I've been hiding on the continent- France, Italy, Germany. And I've been moving constantly. With Potter and the Department of Mysteries on the warpath, it just wasn't safe for me to come back to England. I'm too closely linked with both Astoria and Draco Malfoy. And…" She looked away. "I've spent the past four months trying to make myself believe that my vision wasn't real. I've had visions that weren't quite real, you know. I especially didn't want to think that it had anything to do with St. Mungo's."

Ginny wasn't quite sure how to phrase her next question, considering the trouble that had already been caused over the subject, but it seemed important to ask. "Daphne, did you ever tell Dean that you thought there was a link?"

"Oh, I tried. But he never wanted to hear anything about it, so I gave up. How on earth did you know about that?"

"You told me, remember? I met you on the night of the art opening back at the beginning of June, and you said you were trying to tell him."

"I did?" Daphne looked confused.

"You mean you don't remember?" asked Ginny.

"I… I don't _think_ so."

Had Daphne told her anything about it later that night? Was that how she knew that she'd connected Draco Malfoy and her sister to St. Mungo's, and had tried to tell Dean about it? Ginny couldn't remember that either. She had never been quite sure about what had really happened that night of the art opening, when she'd slipped into the side door of _Bas-Bleu_ in an attempt to avoid the crowds, and had ended up once again in the mysterious chamber with its corridor and locked doors. Dean had never said anything about it, and she had never asked Luna. And Draco Malfoy, of course, could not be asked. But it had _happened_. Surely it had. Or had it?

Daphne's voice broke in on her thoughts. "But almost another month ago, I knew that I had to come back here."

"How did you know?" asked Ginny. "Did you have another vision?" Was there something just a bit evasive about Daphne's tone of voice? Ginny wondered.

"Uh… no. I simply knew. I didn't exactly have another vision, but I was sure that I'd been right. So on October second, I came back to London—"

"Wait. Wait. October second? That was the date?"

"Something happened to you then," Daphne said softly. "Didn't it? That's why you tried to find me again."

Ginny closed her eyes, breathing in the smell of the harsh, cheap soap that Daphne must be using. She remembered when she had visited her in her studio, and had worn only the most expensive perfume.

"I had a dream about Draco Malfoy," she said. It was a little easier to describe now, and she barely stumbled over the details.

Daphne only nodded after she was done. _Isn't she going to say anything?_ Ginny wondered. "It's been tormenting me for almost a month," she went on. "I haven't heard anything from him or… or anything _about_ him, anything more than I have since the start of June, which is nothing. Blaise Zabini doesn't even know what happened to him. As far as anyone knows, Draco Malfoy dropped off the face of the earth. So what I have to know, what I'd risk almost anything to know, is whether it was real, or was it only a dream? And you're the one who had that vision involving him. You're the only one I could think of who might have any idea."

"I don't," said Daphne.

"Haven't you had any kind of new vision? I mean, one about him?"

"No."

"Haven't you seen anything that's happening to him at all?"

"I've seen something of where he's been. Draco Malfoy is apparently wandering aimlessly about Europe, going to parties, wasting time at the estates of stupid upper-class people, attending art auctions, playing polo, and doing everything else that anyone with too much money does to fill up their time. He's bored as hell, and he doesn't seem very happy, and I have yet to see a smile on his face. But I haven't seen any visions involving him, Ginny. No."

"You mean…" Ginny whispered. "You haven't seen anything about… him and me? What might happen between Malfoy and me? What's happening now?"

"No. But I think you know that by now, Ginny." Her voice was very quiet in the dark, very soft.

"I'm the only one who can know what's happening," said Ginny. "And I think I do." _I can't even think this,_ she moaned inwardly. _It's going to hurt too much…_

_You can, and you will._

The truth was as simple and sharp as a knife cutting away every illusion she had. There _was_ no connection between her and Draco anymore. The bond was broken. That was why she hadn't heard anything from him. That was why she hadn't even dreamed anything more about him. That was the truth, the one she had been running from for a month now. The dream of him standing in her bedroom doorway and holding out his hand to her had meant nothing. Deep in her heart, Ginny was now sure that she had already known this. So she'd set Colin to finding Daphne as a way of avoiding the truth, of postponing the inevitable. If she'd sought out Daphne herself, then she would have learned the truth right away.

Ginny started to laugh. "I've done it again. I've failed myself again, Daphne. Gods, why do I keep on being so weak, why can't I just let _go_? Why can't I ever learn?"

"We're all weak when it comes to certain things," Daphne said quietly. "And certain people. Sometimes it takes a few go-rounds to learn, that's all."

Ginny leaned back, sighing. "Daphne, how were you able to get this far down into the tunnels, anyway? Nobody knows the way down here. It's too complicated." That brought up the question of how she herself knew, of course, and she realized it just an instant too late after she'd said it.

"I was here," said Daphne. "Seven years ago. My family thought I was mad because of the visions, and I was sent here for about a month. I even knew about a few of the niches, although not this one."

"I was here the summer I was twelve years old," said Ginny. "It was about three months, so I know a bit more than you do about where things are."

Daphne looked at her and smiled. "So we've been in the loony bin, then."

"Looks like," said Ginny. She sat up and turned round. "Daphne! Did you see that? Someone just went down that corridor, to the left."

"Dean," said Daphne. "We'd better stay here a bit longer."

"No, too short to be Dean."

"Colin, then. Even more of a reason to stop here. The fewer of us who are caught together—if we _are_ caught—the better."

"Whoever this was, they were shorter than Colin, too! And a lot skinnier, with long hair, I think. Daphne, someone else is down here. I heard another pair of footsteps earlier—"

Daphne sucked in her breath, and then, before Ginny could even finish the sentence, she was gone, darting out of the niche and down the corridor.

_That's it! Everyone's gone insane._ Grimly, Ginny followed her.

After a few minutes, she stopped, confused. Both sets of footsteps had faded away and disappeared. She'd gone so far into the tunnels that she'd reached a part even _she_ didn't recognize. _I should've known I'd get lost sooner or later,_ she thought. _Merlin, what now?_ Ginny bit her lip. Even the Aurors didn't know these tunnels as well as she did, so if _she_ was lost…

A set of footsteps started up again, and relief swept over her. She began moving towards them, stealthily. _Whoever that is,_ Ginny vowed, _they are not getting away from me. I won't be stuck down here! If they got down this far, they must know how to get back._ Of course, she thought nervously, if they _did_ know their way around the tunnels as thoroughly as this, then they might be one of the long-term patients. Maybe a maniac was waiting for her just round the corner. Still, it was always possible that they were a maniac who might know the way out—

Ginny came out into an open space, and she stopped dead still in her tracks.

She realized several things at once. The first was that she actually did know where she was. She'd reached the secret entrance to the psychiatric wards of St. Mungo's, the one she'd found during that summer when she was twelve years old. She simply must have taken an unfamiliar route, and that was why she'd been so convinced that she was horribly lost. The second was that the person attempting to open the entrance with a wand and a number of quite interesting unlocking spells didn't have the slightest chance of success; nobody could possibly get into that door unless they were a current patient of mediwizard. The third was that the person couldn't possibly be the one she'd heard earlier, because he was much taller and stronger, not to mention more graceful and more muscular, and, Ginny was willing to bet, more blond, more perfectly put together, and more utterly beautiful. The fourth was that as incredible as it seemed to be, this person actually was—

"_Draco Malfoy?_" she asked incredulously.

He stopped. He turned towards her very slowly, as if on a pivot. He was wearing Muggle clothing, she noticed irrelevantly, a white linen shirt, khaki trousers, brown loafers, the sort of thing that looked casual and thrown-together but probably cost more than for that one outfit than it had to rebuild the entire Burrow—

"Hello, Weasley," he said, in the same low, musical voice that he remembered.

And then he did something as incredible, as unbelievable, as if he'd unbuttoned the shirt and trousers and thrown them off and walked towards her naked on the stone floor. More unbelievable, actually, because she had very little trouble picturing Draco Malfoy doing that.

He smiled at her.

Smiled. He… _dared_… to smile… at her.

_I am going to kill him!_


	43. The Journey

A/N: Thanks to readers and reviewers! The chapter where Draco said that Ginny was no better than Marie… I'll have to look up exactly which chapter that was, but we're going to find out more about what happened that night very soon. And posting is going to be very fast from now on.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

- _Arthur Schopenhauer _

Blood pumped from Ginny's chest to the tips of her fingers, the ends of her toes, the roots of her hair; her fists clenched, all her muscles tightened, ready to spring. Vaguely, she heard a very low growling noise coming from her throat.

Draco's inexcusable smile widened, showing the tips of perfect white teeth. The canines were very sharp.

"_You!_" she hissed.

"Guilty as charged," he agreed.

"You," she repeated. There must be other words to use, additional words that would get her point across more effectively, but it seemed to be remarkably difficult to think of any of them at the moment. She fished and came up with one. "Malfoy," she said triumphantly.

"Ah, the Weasley brilliance shines through," he said, fiddling with his wand. "But I'm a bit busy at the moment, so unless you have anything more to say… "He pushed his sleeves up. She watched the muscles flex in his powerful hands, watched his long, strong, knobbly fingers delicately undo the ivory buttons. His forearms were corded with muscle and sprinkled with very fine silvery hairs.

"You're here at St. Mungo's," said Ginny.

"Yes. We both are. I hope it didn't take you too terribly long to solve this geographical problem? If Finding spells aren't quite doing the trick for you these days, Weasley, Muggles have a fascinating contraption known as a global positioning system. Perhaps you ought to look into it."

She made a helpless, inarticulate noise.

"_Was_ there something else you wanted to say?" he asked politely.

There were a million things she could have said to Draco Malfoy, but the most important one was blindingly clear. Harry had thought that Draco was the key to whatever was going on at St. Mungo's, and he had been right after all. He'd believed that Ginny herself was somehow tied up with Draco now, which certainly wasn't true, but other than that, he might have seen the entire thing correctly in a crystal ball. This was obviously the only issue that was even worth mentioning. Trying to talk about anything else to Draco would only be a maddening waste of breath. Ginny opened her mouth confidently, ready to speak.

_Malfoy, your little game is just about over. You've endangered me and my friends, you're clearly doing something nefarious at St. Mungo's, and I'm half convinced that I really should turn you over to the Ministry. I'm never going to act like a fool over you again. So just put down that wand, back very, very slowly away from the door, and-_

"Malfoy, you're completely vile and disgusting," she heard herself say instead.

"Same old song, Weasley, eh?"

"You know what I'm talking about! The last time we- I mean, when I saw you, when you saw _me_ and I was in a bed and—ooh!" She stamped her foot impotently.

Incredibly- _unbelievably_- his grin grew even wider. "Oh. That. I'll take those particular charming terms as a compliment, then. It seems to me that you enjoyed the vile, disgusting activities at the time."

Pure rage sang through her veins. She wanted to launch herself on him and start kicking , biting, scratching, anything that would wipe that self-satisfied smirk off his face. "_You_ must be talking about some sort of complete madness that took place only in your own head, and nowhere else. _I_ am talking about the fact that I'll never forgive you for the things you said the last time I saw you!"

"Hmm. Now that you mention it, I suppose that they weren't very gentlemanly things to say, but they were true."

_You're not pure. You can't purify me. I don't need you now. You're no better than Marie ever was._ Her muscles contracted, and she sprang in one glorious movement of furious energy.

Ginny wasn't exactly sure what happened next, except that Draco was holding her at arm's length. It didn't prevent her from getting in a few good kicks.

"I hardly think that a few rather meaningless comments- _ow!_- merited all of these— _ouch!_ Weasley, that's a very strategic area, you know!"

"You deserve worse! There's _nothing_ bad enough to do to you, considering the horrible things you said—"

"All right, all right. What did I say?"

"I suppose you're going to try to claim that you don't even remember?" Ginny shot out her leg in a sudden kick that had always worked as part of a Quidditch feint. He avoided it nimbly. _What fast reflexes he has,_ she thought. _But they won't be fast enough!_

"I do remember. I think I even remember the exact _words_." He paused. "Let's see… 'Uncle Ziggy once told me that all dreams are about sex anyway. It's all sublimation. You shouldn't pay attention to anything else. He's the Malfoy Manor ghost librarian, you know.'"

Ginny's mouth dropped open; she was so shocked that she even gave up on the start of a particular maneuver that George had taught her to use on unruly boyfriends when she was fourteen years old. She remembered, too. He had said something like that to her on Vendetta Island, when she'd come to him as a succubus and he'd almost coaxed her into having sex with him. _But that certainly wasn't the last time he ever saw me!_

"You know what I'm talking about! That wasn't it, and you didn't say it that time, and you know it!"

"Those certainly were the last things I said to you. I haven't seen you since you left me high and dry on Vendetta Island, you unsatisfactory succubus."

She stared at him. "You mean you're really going to try to convince me that you don't remember the time we met after that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Weasley. There's no additional meeting _to_ remember. That was it."

"But… it was on the eighth of June… here in London… at the _Bas-Bleu_ art gallery…" She stumbled over the words.

"Well, I might be willing to discuss the matter," he said in carefully patient tones, "but it's a bit hard to have a rational discussion under these circumstances, you must admit... Are you through trying to kill me? No? Yes? Possibly not, so I don't think I'll risk it yet."

_How strong he is_ flitted through her mind. _So much stronger than he looks. Those sinewy arms-_ She took a wild swing at him. He held her further off and shook his head.

"'At the Opera Garnier, the setting for a recent event hosted by socialite witch and L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, high society guests enjoyed an all-ghost performance of _La Traviata_, headlined by Enrico Caruso and Maria Callas. Hard to say which was more impressive, though—the coloratura soprano, or the simply scintillating Hope diamond as worn by the lovely Liliane. And just think, the Smithsonian remains convinced that the genuine article is in their possession. Cherchez la femme indeed! In this case, however, we'd much rather cherchez for the divine Draco instead—except that as the crème de la crème de la creamiest of crème , he was quite easy to find at this particular event.'"

_Maybe he really doesn't remember much of anything, because he's gone completely round the twist._ "Malfoy, what in the hell are you talking about?" Ginny demanded.

"It's a quote from French _Vogue_, dated June sixth. Surely you don't think that I'd come up with such purple prose on my own?"

"I'm so very impressed that you remember the entire thing," said Ginny, attempting to match his sarcasm and aware that she was failing miserably. "Would you mind telling me what the point is of this little memory exercise, though? That happened two days before the art opening here."

"I think I'll let you figure it out yourself, Weasley. I'll move on now. 'Calling all gate crashers! Or rather, we're not. They oughtn't to have even bothered trying to get into French culture minister Frederic Mitterand's secluded chateau nestled in Chamonix, in the shadow of Mont Blanc. Of course, if they'd somehow managed to snag a coveted broom ride for the exclusive country weekend honoring recently tamed playboy of perfection le Draco Malfoy and his wife Astoria, nee Greengrass, they'd have gotten an eyeful on Saturday night as the most select guests dined on chocolate pumpkin olive oil tapenade, candied herring and pheasant navels under glass, dandelion and dried buffalo jerky magazine clipping vinaigrette salad. Over green telephone-flavored sherbert, Elizabeth Vigee-Le Brun's most flattering portrait to date was unveiled.' Just as an aside, Weasley, I agree; it far outdid her paintings of Marie Antoinette as far as flattering the sitter, since it didn't show Astoria's distinct resemblance to an Afghan hound. Anyway, back to the article… 'On Monday, of course, the honored couple was off to yet another scintillating soiree at the villa of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. This author is quite sure that he'll be consoled for his recent electoral loss the moment he lays eyes on the delicious Draco!'' Ugh." Draco shuddered. "Silvio couldn't keep his eyes off my arse all night long."

"When was the weekend?"

"June seventh and eighth. Not the way I would have chosen to spend my twenty-first birthday, I do assure you. And Monday was the ninth."

"I can't believe it," Ginny said numbly.

"Neither can I," said Draco. "That magazine prints the worst prose I've ever read in my life. Anyway, photographs were taken for Muggle French _Vogue_ covering all of these events, and I figured quite prominently in them. Some were in the local newspapers as well, I believe. They were all dated and time-stamped. I'm sure you could find them, if you really wanted to go to the trouble. I wasn't and couldn't have been anywhere near London."

Ginny's head spun round and round in dizzy circles, thoughts darting and swooping like swallows. Was any of this _possible_? It couldn't be. And yet… perhaps a better question was whether it was possible for him to be lying. She could find copies of magazines and newspapers anywhere. Why would he tell lies that could be so easily exposed?

"Will you let me go now, Malfoy?" she asked him.

"Are you quite done hitting me?"

"Yes."

"No more kicking?"

"None."

"How about the pinching?"

"I've already informed you," she said glacially, "that I've stopped."

Draco deposited her carefully on the floor. She made a great show of brushing herself off, sure that her cheeks were burning.

"While we're on the subject, Weasley," said Draco, "do you think you're completely done blaming me for everything? Because I've really got a great deal of work to do in getting this door open."

_He didn't said anything about biting._ The thought crossed her mind briefly, but she decided that at least a slightly more dignified approach would be a much better one to take.

"I haven't properly begun blaming you, Malfoy," Ginny said grimly. "The Ministry's appointed Harry to head up an investigation into something that was supposedly going on at St. Mungo's, and he's convinced that you have something to do with it. I didn't think there could possibly be anything to it. But it seems to me that I see you standing here right this minute, trying to break into St. Mungo's. So there's only one logical conclusion. You're the one who's caused all this trouble. None of it would've happened if it wasn't for you. The least you can do now is to tell me what the hell you're _doing_ here!"

"It's a long explanation," said Draco. "We're a little pressed for time."

"I'll show you pressed, Malfoy!" She whipped out her wand and pointed it at him.

He started backing away from her. Ginny was pleased to see that he looked a bit alarmed. "I think I would have preferred you to start kicking me again."

"Too late! You had your chance."

"Now, Weasley, I'm sure we can talk this thing out like reasonable adults—ow!"

She poked the tip of her wand into his chest. "My friends are in danger," she said passionately, "and it's because of you. Colin, Daphne, Dean—"

"Oh!" Draco's eyebrows drew together into a single dark-blond line. "The saintly Dean Thomas. Has it occurred to you, Weasley, that he's the one who's most likely to attract Potter and company?"

Ginny shook her head impatiently. "_I'm _the one Harry already suspects, and _you're_ the one he'd love to find. So don't be ridiculous. Dean's got nothing to do with anything."

"Oh, yes he does. He's a mediwizard at St. Mungo's, and his internship is located in the psychiatric division. That means that the Ministry knows exactly what his schedule is, and they'll certainly be aware that he's appeared at a time when he's not supposed to be working."

That hadn't occurred to her, and she knew from her time here eight years ago that Draco was right. She pushed it away. Another thought stirred briefly in her mind, though. _How on earth would Draco Malfoy know a thing like that?_

"Understand, I'm not saying that it occurred to him either." Draco shrugged. "Oh, no, I won't build Dean Thomas up into a villain. It was sheer Gryffindor do-gooder-ism. Is it possible that you still don't understand how blind that sort of self-righteousness can be?"

"This didn't happen because of Dean!"

"I didn't exactly say that, now did I?" he asked. His eyes were on her, those silvery, mirrored eyes. They saw too much, she thought. They always had. "You do know what I'm talking about, Weasley, don't you?"

"No," she said woodenly.

"Yes. Nobody else will say this to you, will they? They'll spare your feelings, or at least they're quite convinced that's what they're doing." He smiled bitterly. "But I'll say it, because I understand what it's like. I know all about it."

She looked into those piercing eyes of his, and her mind frayed in panic. "You know?"

He nodded.

_Draco can never know._ Lucius had whispered.

But it was too late. _He knows! He's found out. I don't know how, but he has._ He'd learned about what had happened to her, and he'd learned that she'd been sent here the summer after her second year because of it. Did he know everything? In that molten instant, she was sure of it, and she wanted to run away, or sink through the floor, or die. He knew. Draco Malfoy knew. Why did she care so much? Why did it matter, what difference did it really make… there was no point in asking, Ginny thought despairingly. She was sure she hated him; she was positive she had freed herself of him, she certainly did know that she had learned to stand on her own two feet without him. Then why did it cut into her soul that he knew about this? Why did it seem to slice more deeply than any Severing spell ever could have done? All of her worst memories rushed back in a horrid flood, and she could feel the twelve-year-old girl within cringing away from the blame that was surely coming.

"My fault," she whispered, barely even aware that she was speaking.

She felt the tip of a long, strong finger lift her chin roughly. Then she was staring into Draco Malfoy's confused face.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I—you know what I'm talking about, Malfoy."

"Oh. I see. You're taking all of this on yourself now. I suppose you're preparing to snatch Creevey's drama queen crown?" He snorted. "I'm not talking about fault, or guilt, or blame. Nothing so melodramatic as that. I'm talking about bearing your share of responsibility." Suddenly, he looked very tired. The elaborate sarcasm seemed to have dropped away from his speech as well, as if he no longer had enough energy to keep it up, at least for the moment. "You can take whatever you want in life, Weasley, or at least you can try. But you'll find that when the final reckoning comes, the bill is higher than you ever imagined it would be. That's when you learn that you've got to take the responsibility that is yours."

_He doesn't know._ The relief rushed through her so strongly that her knees wavered, and she almost fell. Draco scowled.

"Don't you dare faint on me. What the hell's wrong with you now?"

"Nothing. And I'm not going to faint! And I _can so_ take responsibility. What do you think I've been doing the past four months, when you've been—" She shut her lips tightly. "Never mind."

"You've been creating your art." He looked at her, and she wondered how his eyes had suddenly gone so astonishingly serious. "That's what you ought to be doing right now, Weasley. You've got an art show in less than one week, and it just might be the most important one yet."

"What makes you think you would know anything about that?" she retorted.

"Because I know Sir Truman Sniffingsworth, and he'll be there," said Draco. "You ought to be acquainted with him, at least."

_Truman Sniffingsworth… why does that name sound familiar?_ She'd heard it recently. Ginny cudgeled her brain and retrieved the memory. "I had an artist's luncheon last Thursday," she said. "He was there—he sat across from me. He's very odd, he wears two wigs, one on top of the other, and he kept staring at my hair. Colin thought he'd buy some of my older paintings, but he didn't. What the hell does any of this have to do with you, Malfoy?"

"Nothing," said Draco, "but I happen to know for a fact that the charming Sir Sniffingsworth has the Department of Culture at the Ministry in his pocket. The Fountain of Magical Brethren is due for a complete redesign, including new sculptures, and an artist has yet to be chosen for the project. Gossip has it that he's put your name at the top of the list."

"That's absolutely mad," said Ginny. "I just said that he didn't buy so much as a crayon sketch from me. And how would you know anything about it anyway?"

"Let's just say that in the past several months, I've learned a great many things," said Draco.

His face was smooth and blank, but there was something about the way he said those words that sent a shiver up Ginny's spine. "Well, I certainly haven't heard anything about it."

"Creevey ought to have heard something, and he should have told you. He should certainly know; as your personal assistant, he's slipping badly if he doesn't." Draco looked at her shrewdly. "Or has he missed the chance to find out because he's been spending every second of his spare time over the past several weeks spying on me, per your instructions? Or was I the target? No… Daphne Greengrass, I think."

She couldn't look at him.

"Poor Daphne," murmured Draco. "Weasley, you didn't hurt anyone half as much as yourself with your little James-Bond-by-proxy escapades. No matter what I might be doing, and no matter why I may be here, I wonder if your friends would be in quite so much danger if it weren't for your actions." He paused. "Take responsibility, why can't you?"

Draco Malfoy deserved to be strangled to death, she decided. He was a monster. He was a maniac. He was… _Saying the things to me that Dean wouldn't say. And I wanted Dean to say them; I didn't want him to make excuses for me. Talk about being careful what you ask for because you might just get it!_

"You're the last person in the world who should talk about taking responsibility, Malfoy," she snapped. "What about taking responsibility for what _you're_ doing? And what the hell _are_ you doing here?" _Ergh! He managed to turn me off that topic for a good fifteen minutes,_ she belatedly realized.

"We really don't have time for this edifying conversation, you know," he said.

She stuck out her jaw at a stubborn angle. "We're having it anyway."

"What if we hear the pitter-patter of little Auror feet?"

She looked him directly in his beautiful silvery eyes, willing herself not to be drawn in. "If your answers don't satisfy me, Malfoy, then I just may let them catch you."

"You don't believe in mincing words, do you, Weasley?"

"With you, Malfoy? No."

"Well, I suppose that's fair enough." Draco rubbed his chin. He looked even more exhausted than before, she saw. "Unless you're planning to kill me, I do wish you'd put that wand down."

Reluctantly, she nodded and slipped it back into its sheath. "So why _are_ you here?"

"Not for the reasons that Potter assumes," he said. "I'm sure he pictures dark Death Eaters plots and evil puppy-strangling schemes by the dozen. But it's nothing like that at all. Do you remember when Potter returned to the Ministry at the end of May, one day after all the other Aurors?"

"Yes." Ginny swallowed hard past the lump in her throat. _Only a few minutes before I learned that you'd married Astoria. Not that I care anymore!_

"What exactly did he say?"

She tried to remember the precise words."He told everyone that he'd been at the Malfoy estate the night before, searching for proof of what you'd done. He said that all he found was proof that you'd managed to hide all the Malfoy money from the Wizengamot. Then he said that you'd covered your tracks so cleverly that he still couldn't get you on anything. But what does that have to do with the reason why you're here?"

Draco shrugged. "It has everything to do with it. I'm here because of the money. A very tricky state of affairs has come up, and the Malfoy money is involved. In order to resolve the situation, I need to get into St. Mungo's."

"That's your idea of an explanation?" Ginny asked incredulously.

"It's really quite a sufficient one."

"Look, that's not enough! It wouldn't convince a flobberworm that you're not up to some awful plot or other."

"Weasley, it'll just have to do."

Her fingers crept towards her wand again. "No, it _won't_, Malfoy. I happen to know a few Truth-Telling spells…"

One corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. His upper lip slid back into a dimple, she saw. "I don't think you quite understand what I mean. It really isn't possible for you to get the whole truth out of me here, even if you did know those supposed spells, which I can assure you that you don't—the only ones that would do the slightest bit of good are very dark indeed. _In vino veritas_ couldn't make a dent in me when it comes to this particular subject, and neither could Veritaserum."

_He's telling the truth,_ she thought. _Maybe Draco Malfoy is such a born liar that when he does say anything that's true, it's just impossible to miss the difference in him._ "Does this mean that I can never trust anything you say again?" she asked acidly. "Or have I gone mad to even ask a question like that?"

"I can only keep it thoroughly clandestine when it comes to a very few things," said Draco. "There are dark spells that make this trick possible, but they require so much power to keep up that they can't cover more than one or two secrets. This is one of them. If you ask me precisely what I mean when I say that my reasons for wanting to enter St. Mungo's are related to the Malfoy money, then I can't answer you."

"Then I suppose you're lying about it having anything to do with the money in the first place."

Draco shook his head. "I don't have nearly enough extra energy on hand to keep up a spell that would cover that lie."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "You _really_ expect me to believe that a cash flow problem is your motive? Come on, Malfoy. You came down here to blow up the Ministry. Just admit it."

Draco rolled his eyes right back at her. _That shouldn't look good on anyone,_ thought Ginny. _I probably look like a cocker spaniel with a thyroid problem. Malfoy, on the other hand, looks like a fallen angel in a snit at God for telling him that he can't spend eternity having sex with the seraphim._

"The Ministry doesn't even connect with St. Mungo's, as I'm sure you know. And I'm trying to explain how this spell works. You're more than intelligent enough to understand it. See? I'm gracious enough to give you a compliment, even though you were doing your best to make me into a eunuch fifteen minutes ago. You're lucky that you failed, by the way, because every witch on the continent and quite a few in Antarctica would have put out a contract on you—"

Ginny felt lucky that she failed as well, because deep down, she wasn't at all sure that she could have flown fast enough to escape from all of them. _Especially because there would've been loads of wizards in the bunch. They would have been out for my blood, all right, and the worst part is that I would've known I deserved whatever they did to me when they caught me… Focus, Ginny! Focus!_ She scowled at him.

"I've told you that the reason why I'm trying to get into St. Mungo's involves the Malfoy money, and it's true," Draco went on. "But if you asked me precisely what this means, I simply wouldn't tell you that. This isn't terribly complicated, though. The money really is the motive. And as wizarding founding father of the United States George Washington actually didn't say when he didn't chop down a cherry tree, I cannot tell a lie."

_I really think he's telling the truth,_ thought Ginny. _This just might be a record. Draco Malfoy's told the truth three times in fifteen minutes. Shite. Now what?_

Ginny cleared her throat. "Malfoy, you can't get through that door. Unless you work here, like Dean, or you're a… a current patient, you simply can't go in there. Maybe there's some sort of other exception I don't know about, but short of that, you cannot enter St. Mungo's psychiatric wards that secret way."

"Well, I've been trying for quite some time, and I don't seem to be getting anywhere," mused Draco. "I think you have a point, Weasley. I suppose I'd best be on my way, or Harry and his merry men might come along and nab me."

"I still think I ought to let them," she said mechanically.

"You know, I don't care for that plan one bit…."

"Then maybe you should have thought of that before you came down here and started mucking about with a wand, Malfoy."

"I don't delude myself into thinking that you care about what happens to me, Weasley," said Draco. "But you might think about the fact that if they catch me in their net, they'll nab you as well. Do you really think that allowing Potter to find you in my company is one of the better plans you've ever had?"

On reflection, Ginny definitely didn't. "Well- Harry isn't here yet. He can't be, or I would've heard him, and the Aurors too. It's only me, Daphne, Colin, and Dean."

"So it's four people, all running about in an area that the Department of Mysteries is watching like a hawk. And you don't think that's a problem? Weasley, why didn't you just set off fireworks down here?"

"Harry's not here yet, and neither is anyone else from the Ministry," Ginny repeatedly doggedly. "We can all get out of here in plenty of time if we leave now, although don't think you're going to tag along with us."

"Ah, the Weasley diplomacy. It's always so lovely to see. As much as it pains me to refuse your kind offer of help—"

"Shh!" hissed Weasley.

"You're always stifling my self-expression," complained Draco. "It's one of your least attractive traits."

"Will you shut up?" Ginny put a finger over his lips. They were soft and warm, and she could feel his breath sweeping over her skin, but none of those distractions were enough to keep her from hearing the soft footsteps in the distance.

"What is it?" asked Draco, suddenly alert.

"Those footsteps. They're the same ones I heard before. I don't know who they could possibly belong to. They're certainly not Harry or Dean or Colin, and the thing is that they don't sound like Daphne, either. I can tell that now. And just once, I could swear saw someone else; I thought it _was_ Daphne, it certainly wasn't a man—"

"What do you mean?"

It took Ginny a moment or two to even recognize Draco's voice. It had dropped a register and gone flat and dead, When she glanced up at his face, his features had hardened incredibly. The little chamber suddenly seemed to have gone icy cold. The mask had dropped. _I've seen this before,_ Ginny realized. _But it's been a long time. Back in the cottage. Months and months ago…_ He had grabbed onto her arm, and his grasp was like iron.

"Let go of me!" Ginny yanked away her wrist and rubbed it. "I don't know who it was, if I even saw anybody at all. Whoever it was, they were shorter than anybody except Daphne, and they seemed thinner than Colly and Dean—wait!" She ran up to the very edge of the little stone room. The figure had darted down a distant corridor, almost too fast to see. _They're lost,_ she thought. _Whoever it is, they don't know their way around here at all._ "There they are—there _she_ is again. There's nobody in the Aurors like that. That's not Hermione, and the only other woman is Violetta Pugsley, and she's an absolute cow, nowhere near that thin."

Draco grabbed her arm again and started dragging her toward a corridor.

"What are you doing—let _go_ of me—" She tried to struggle against him. She might as well have been fighting a cyclone.

"We've got to get out of here," he said. "Hurry. It's a temporary one. It's about to close."

"I don't know what you're talking ab—" But then suddenly she did know, because Draco was pulling her towards a connection portal that had opened at the mouth of the corridor. She managed to wrench her arm away as he fought to get into it.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Malfoy?" she demanded.

He stood in the whirling center of the portal, already beginning to retreat from her. and he held out his hand.

_Taking Malfoy's hand would be a bad idea,_ thought Ginny. _Really, really bad. I'd be sure to regret it. I should just stay where I am. _And in a few moments, it would be too late to follow him anyway.

"Come to me," he said.

She took Draco's hand, and felt his solid warmth. He pulled her to him, and she closed her eyes, hearing the howling winds of portal-travelling all round her. _Where are we going?_ she wondered. _I don't have any idea at all. I suppose this means we're going to end up wherever Malfoy wanted to go._ Ginny groaned.

_Oh, I knew this was a bad idea!_


	44. To a Place of Truth

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers… this site has been giving me a lot of problems in the last couple of days, so everybody will be thanked by name after the next chapter, and some questions will be answered.

And the fun begins...

It is not down in any map; true places never are.

~Herman Melville

+++

_Mm,_ Ginny thought sleepily, cuddling against the solid warm chest, pressing her head into it. _Feels nice._ She sniffed. _Where's that chocolate smell coming from? I want some. I hope it's truffles._ Long, strong, knobbly fingers feeding her chocolate truffles, one by one. Yes. That was what she wanted. She yawned and stretched, feeling the strong, slightly yielding, pulsing warmth move next to her.

"Chocolate?" she asked drowsily.

"Sorry to disappoint, Weasley, but I didn't really get a chance to pack a picnic basket," said an all-too-familiar voice.

Her eyes popped open. Draco Malfoy stood above her, raising an eyebrow. She realized belatedly that she was clinging to his arm. _Clinging_ to his _arm_!

"You're wrinkling my shirt," he pointed out. "I won't be able to get it to a laundry-elf for at least the next several hours."

In answer, Ginny shoved herself away from him, hoping that she was using enough force to shove him all the way into the wall. She wasn't, of course.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"Someplace safe."

"Yes, but…" Ginny's voice trailed off as she examined the corridor where they stood. She had a feeling that she could almost, _almost_ answer her own question. It all looked naggingly familiar, like a blurred image superimposed over someplace that she just knew she'd been. The silk-papered walls, the teak wainscoting, the silver sconces casting dim pools of witchlight on the hardwood floors, the intricately carved doors lining the hallways… everything teased at her memory without ever quite fulfilling its promise.

"Malfoy, you'd better just tell me exactly where we are."

"Well, I will. But I think it might require just a bit of explanation first. You see—"

A giggle drifted down the hall.

"Who is that?" hissed Ginny.

"I couldn't say for certain," said Draco.

"You mean that you do think you know who it is, Malfoy?" demanded Ginny.

"Ah, perhaps."

"You've heard that woman giggling before. Haven't you? And it's because you've _been_ here before." Ginny began to back him against the wall, a distinctly fiery look in her eye.

"It's entirely possible… Weasley, do put your wand away! I mean to say, I haven't really had occasion to go here at all recently, but I did spend a certain length of time on the premises when I was sixteen years old, of course, and I seem to recall that giggle as belonging to a woman named Devyani. I can't say I ever cared for her myself, but that giggle was quite 's all I meant."

A conversation came back to Ginny with hideous clarity. _Ah, it's been too long, sighed Ron. "I've really missed Sarina. Anjuli too. And I always had a wonderful time with Devyani_.

"I know exactly where we are! Oh, don't even bother trying to lie. Don't _bother._ How did I not—"

"Yes?" Draco's eyebrow went up again.

Ginny devoutly thanked whatever gods might be for not allowing her say something which certainly had to rank in at least the top twenty sentences _not_ to say in front of Draco Malfoy; namely, _how did I not see right away that we're at the Crystal Palace?_ But now that she knew where they had to be, she did recognize it. This was the exact corridor she'd seen in Appendix X of _Nature's Nobility_.

"Tee-hee!" A slender witch with a mane of dark hair ran past them at the very end of the corridor. She was definitely wearing a red lace robe, Ginny saw.

"My, my, but what a naughty witch you are! I'm afraid that I may to be forced to punish you just the tiniest—bit- when I finally- lay hands on you, my dear," panted the jolly voice of a wizard who was apparently in hot pursuit.

_Oh, shite!_ thought Ginny in utter horror. Devyani—if that actually _was_ the witch's name—hadn't even glanced down the corridor, but what if her customer did?

"You know, these portals really don't go too many places," said Draco. "It's hardly _my_ fault if we ended up in a location you didn't particularly care for. You can't really blame _me_ if you would rather have gone someplace that just wasn't an option, such as, say, _Nanny McNice's Nursery for Exceptionally Well-Behaved Kittens_, because —"

"Malfoy, will you shut up and get down?" hissed Ginny, yanking at his arm.

"Who's my delicious slice of devil's food cake? Mm, mm mm! The Professor wants a bite!" the male voice cried happily. _Professor? What—who-_ Ginny realized in horror that his footsteps were definitely coming towards them. But she still couldn't see him. Could he be a ghost? Did ghosts continue to have sex? _Oh, please don't let it be Professor Binns. No, surely Binns wouldn't be that cheerful._

Then the very top of a head of hair came into view at the end of the corridor, and Ginny realized why she hadn't seen him before. It was Professor Flitwick. He paused, looking from side to side. "Did she go this way… or that way? Hmm. Let's see!" He started down the hall. But Ginny had already seen where Devyani was headed, and it wasn't in that direction. At the rate he was going, Flitwick would be trotting under their noses instead in about thirty seconds. And because the expression could be taken literally in this particular instance, there was no way in the world he could miss them.

Ginny didn't stop to think; she simply moved on instinct. She felt a doorknob digging into the back of her leg directly behind her and whirled, frantically rattling at it, fully expecting it to be locked. It turned. She shoved the door open and dragged Draco in. He was making some sort of noise, which she imagined was a protest; she ignored it. Something scratched the side of her leg; she ignored that as well. She slammed the door and leaned against the back of it, panting.

Ginny leaned down and examined her leg. Her trousers were torn, and there was a light scrape all down one side. Draco bent down to examine it and reached out for her. She moved away a fraction of an instant before his fingers touched her skin.

"You're probably carrying all sorts of horrid Malfoy germs," she said.

"Very mature, Weasley," he said. "Belief in boy and girl germs is generally outgrown in nursery school, but in your case—well, never mind." He looked at her thighs for far too long, in her opinion. "If it had been any deeper, it might have drawn blood," he said.

"Well, it didn't. And I'm fine." Ginny looked away. Her eyes had adjusted to the light now. The room was exceptionally elegant, of course, not that she would have expected anything less. It was a room for exquisite, luxurious seduction, and she would have known it even if she had no idea at all where she was.

Everything was dark and rich and sumptuous, a feast for the senses from the silk-papered walls to the Persian rugs, to the low inlaid tables with vases of full-blown roses perfuming the air with their heady scent, to the subtle glow of wood and silver and leather in the little wet bar to one side. Ginny craned her neck. She could just barely see a door cracked open. Was that the edge of a whirlpool bath with gold fixtures? And then, right up against the other wall—

She looked away too late. She'd already seen the enormous four-poster bed with the ruby hangings and inviting coverlet and plump pillows.

Draco watched her. "There might be bandages in the bathroom," he said casually. "I really couldn't say. But I don't think you need one, Weasley. It didn't draw blood."

She barely heard him. "I've seen this room before," she said aloud, without thinking.

One dark-blond eyebrow went up. "Really? How very interesting. You do get around, don't you, Weasley?"

Too late, Ginny realized what she'd said. "I don't mean I saw it because I was _here_, Malfoy! It was a picture in a book."

"I see. You certainly do believe in an educational choice of reading material, don't you?"

Ginny gave Draco a death glare that had made all of her brothers quail in her tracks since she was seven years old. He only smiled. "Shut it!" she said through clenched teeth. "I'm getting out of here." She reached for the door handle.

"Splendid idea, Weasley," said Draco. He peered through a peephole in the door. "Or on second thought, perhaps not. I somehow doubt that Professor Flitwick will be terribly happy to see you at the moment. He's rather occupied with Devyani… you see, certain patrons of the Palace really prefer to, ahem, conduct business in the corridors. It can even serve as a sort of odd kink. And I seem to remember hearing through Prudence Temperata that Flitwick _does_ believe in taking his time…"

Ginny covered her eyes, then her ears, then wished fleetingly that she had four hands. "I wish I could forget I ever even heard that."

"There are ways," Draco said lightly, "but I seem to recall that you really despise Memory charms."

Ginny shivered convulsively. "I do."

"Then we won't speak about it again," Draco said softly.

Ginny drummed her fingers on her uninjured thigh, ignoring him. _Fuck. He's right. We really can't leave._ She looked around the room again, trying to sort out the details. It was all very hazy, but it certainly did at least remind her of the room she'd taken the teenaged Draco into at the end of her vision ( _fantasy_, she corrected herself, _just a fantasy, brought on by lack of sleep_) while looking at the engravings in _Nature's Nobility._ But all of the rooms at the Crystal Palace probably looked exactly the same, so that did at least make sense. Draco was still watching her with a sardonic half-smile on his face, she saw.

"What a serious look on that pretty face of yours," he said. "Any thoughts to share?"

"You tricked me into coming here, Malfoy," she said without preamble.

He sighed. "I suppose this sort of thing was inevitable… Weasley, it wasn't a trick. We came here through a connection portal, and those are powered by primal magic, as you may know. It's impossible to make any sort of precise prediction about where they'll end up. They're not Apparition sites."

He sounded so sweetly reasonable, she thought. She could feel her hands tightening into fists.

"I would never have come here if I'd known. The portal responds to some sort of an intention. That's why I say that you tricked me," she repeated.

"You seemed willing enough to save your own skin by accompanying me." Draco shrugged.

"That isn't why I let you take me here! It wasn't to save myself; I was trying to save my friends. Not that you'd understand a motive like that."

"Oh? Pray explain such incomprehensible goody-goody nobility to me, Weasley. But in the meantime, would you mind terribly if we were both seated? I've been standing and running about all day, and my feet are tired." Without waiting for her reply, Draco pulled out an overstuffed chair near the round table next to the bed for her. She sat in it ungraciously.

"When Harry does get down to those tunnels," she said, "he'll know that we were there because we both had our wands out at some point. And the second he does know, he won't be interested in anything except finding us. Even if Colin and Daphne and Dean weren't able to get out by then, he'll leave them alone; the Aurors might not even bother with them if they do see them, because they'll be putting all their time and energy towards tracking us. My friends are a thousand times better off getting out on their own with both of us already out of there."

The corners of Draco's mouth twitched up. "It's hard to argue with such fascinating logic, Weasley. If it goes any further towards setting your mind at ease, by the way, Potter and his peons can't possibly follow us here."

"Why not?" Ginny asked suspiciously.

"Weasley, you're simply not living up to your standard intelligence quotient today," said Draco. "What exactly is the Crystal Palace? Do you actually have any precise idea?"

"I certainly do. It's 'an exclusive establishment of pleasure for the amusement of purebloods'—oh. _Oh._" _Harry isn't a pureblood. _Neither were most of the other Aurors, except for maybe that irritating Zacharias Smith.

"Does this mean that we have to stay here?" she demanded.

Draco continued to look at her with the faint, superior smile on his face until she blushed. "At least for a while," he finally said in kindly tones. "But really, Weasley, I wouldn't worry. Even if it weren't for the pureblood problem, let's just say that this section of the Palace is far too exclusive for any of them to be allowed in. But back to the earlier question, now that we both know we've got enough time to properly finish our conversation. No matter how noble your motives might have been in luring away Potter and his pals, you do have to admit that you saved yourself as well. Yes?"

"I suppose so." Ginny blushed. "Look, Malfoy, you can't exactly blame me for not actually wanting to be caught when I didn't do anything wrong.

Draco leaned forward in his chair. "I've already told you that the same could be said of me, Weasley."

His face had suddenly changed, she thought. How had it happened so quickly, like a cloud passing over the sun?

"Oh, you mean that thing about the money?" She shifted uncomfortably, giving a little laugh to cover it up. "You can claim whatever you like, Malfoy. I don't see any reason to believe that you were telling the truth, and I'm sure that whatever the real reason was for your breaking into St. Mungo's, it had to be against wizarding law."

"Ah. So you think that you should have allowed Potter to get hold of me after all?"

_Why does he still look like that, so strange, so serious? Why are his eyes so steadily on mine? If I keep looking so deeply into them, I might never find my way out again._ "I don't know. I don't know what they're doing now at the Ministry," said Ginny, fumbling towards something that made some sort of sense, because it was so very difficult to think clearly with his eyes on her as they were at the moment. "But I think that some laws shouldn't be broken."

Draco's eyes grew even darker. "You may not understand much about the workings of the law, Weasley, but a little shady dealing with money doesn't deserve the death penalty. Yes?"

Cold. How had the room suddenly become so cold? "Malfoy, what are you talking about?"

"Let me finish." He rubbed the back of his neck again. It was like a nervous tic, thought Ginny. Why had he started doing it, and when? "I'd happily take the death penalty any day over a lifelong stint in Azaban, Dementors or no Dementors, and that's just what Potter would arrange for me."

"Don't be stupid." Ginny felt colder than ever. "I—all right, I guess I could believe that he'd try. I do remember what Harry tried to do last time. But he _can't_ do something that would go so completely against the law."

Draco smiled again, but there was no humor in it this time. "Oh, can't he? With the entire Department of Mysteries in his pocket? Just watch, Weasley. Would you?"

"Would I what?" asked Ginny, wondering if she could take the comforter off the bed and wrap it round her.

"Would you simply stand by and watch as I was railroaded into Azkaban?" His eyes were very steady on hers.

Ginny finally had to look away, feeling cowardly as she did it. Then she turned back.

"Malfoy, I… I don't doubt that you probably really are up to something shady with the Malfoy money, and that you have been all along. I do think Harry's right about that. But I don't that's important enough to… I mean, if I could believe that's really all you were doing…" _Am I actually saying that it would be perfectly all right for him to be breaking into St. Mungo's, as long as he didn't lie about the money?_ Ginny stopped, more than a little shaken by the direction this was going in. "Never mind that. The point is, do you really expect me to believe that's all there was to it?"

"So you think I was at St. Mungo's for some hideous, evil reason I didn't choose to share with you, Weasley," said Draco. "Drowning kittens, perhaps, or stomping on orphaned flobberworms, or failing to mind the gap. Tell me this, then. Would you really have given me up to Potter and the Aurors if they had found us?"

Ginny didn't answer.

"I suppose I couldn't blame you if you say yes," said Draco. "It would have made perfect sense, and perhaps it's the only action you could have taken that would have done. It's likely the only way that you could have been sure of saving both yourself and your friends. "

"No," she said. "I wouldn't have done it, Malfoy."

They stared at each other. _Something's crawling over my skin,_ thought Ginny. It was cold, then hot, then burning… She rubbed her fingers along her arm. They tingled. She stared at Draco's fingers again. She wondered if she had ever really noticed just how large and long and knobbly they really were.

"You know, I could still do it. I could go out into the corridor, find that portal again, go through it, find Harry, and turn you over to him," she said abruptly. The plan had enough holes in it to fling several Kneazles through, not to mention that she foresaw some problems with getting through the portal once she had died from embarrassment after running into a naked Professor Flitwick in the middle of some bizarre sexual activity or other, but she didn't see any reason to explain any of that to Malfoy. "I just don't see why I should believe you about the money being the real motive," she finished.

"I'm telling the truth," said Draco. "You don't choose to believe me, that's all."

He was starting to sound exasperated, thought Ginny. iNot that I care! "That's easy to say when you know there's no way to prove it one way or the other."

"I wish there were. We'll have to spend at least the next hour or two in this room, and I don't care to look at that suspicious expression on your face for the entire time."

"Fine," said Ginny, turning on her heel and marching over to the wet bar. She started rummaging through the crystal decanters.

""Weasley, I like the way you think. Getting thoroughly pissed might be a rather good way to spend the next two hours."

She emerged from a tangle of liqueurs. "I'm not drinking any of this, Malfoy! You are. Remember _in vino veritas?_?"

Draco propped himself up against the bar, arms crossed, an amused smile on his face. "I remember that it only works when wine is involved. Do you see any _vino_?"

She didn't.

"That's hardly my fault, Weasley." Draco shrugged. "I'd drink _vin ordinaire_ if it were here. I'd be more than happy to prove to you that I'm not lying."

Ginny slammed a decanter of whiskey down on the bar with more force than strictly necessary. What _now_? She certainly didn't have any Veritaserum. She didn't know any other Truth-Telling spell. Her brother Bill might have known one, but if so, he'd never taught it to her. She could hardly ask him now. Or… or _could_ she?

"Psst," hissed Ginny at Bill's tiny figure in the black and white photograph of her family in Egypt. He was measuring something on the Great Pyramid of Cheops. The child photograph-Ginny was digging happily in the sand by herself and not noticing a thing, and if Ginny could possibly keep it that way, she would. Bill turned. His face broke into a smile.

"Ginny!" he said delightedly. "You're all grown up. You've graduated Hogwarts, right? What are you doing with yourself these days? Not still stuck on that little toad Harry, right?"

"Uh—no, Bill, but how about if we catch up later?" she hedged. "I've got a really dreadfully important question to ask. Can the _in vino veritas_ spell be used without wine?"

"Nope," said Bill. "And before you ask, Gin, your only other option's Veritaserum. There's no actual Truth-Telling spell I know of, at least, not until you get into the Dark ones, which you're _not_ going to do."

Ginny shuddered, remembering what Draco had said earlier. "Don't worry, I won't. But Bill, isn't there anything I can do?"

"Hmm. Give me half a sec." Bill turned away and beckoned to Charlie, who ran out of the edge of the frame and then returned with a little flask. "Here's some we were drinking last night. _Irep bes_, it's called—hey, _you're_ not drinking it, are you, Gin?"

She shook her head. "But does it actually work?"

"Sure. If anything, the effect is stronger and more straightforward, much easier to control. You'll know it's taken effect when you run your wand over the person's arms and they glow blue. But it doesn't last as long, and you have to reverse it with a standard counterspell after about fifteen minutes. One nice bonus is that whoever you're using it on won't even remember what you've asked afterwards."

"All right. But…" Ginny hesitated. She remembered the time that Stephen Jay Gould had tempted her with potato knishes when she started reading _Sense and Sensibility and the Structure of Evolutionary Theory_. She'd been so hungry, but she'd known better than to eat ghost author food. "Will it be all right for the person to drink?"

"Should be," said Bill. "If he drops dead, I suppose we'll know that I was wrong." He whispered the spell, and then handed her the flask with a cheerful grin. She reached out and took it through the photograph frame. Then she advanced on Draco, a determined look in her eye.

"I don't care for the direction this is taking," said Draco.

"Drink it," said Ginny.

"It's nine-year-old photograph wine. It'll make me ill."

"Then it'll be no more than you deserve." Ginny held it up to him. "Malfoy, you just don't have any choice here if you want me to believe you about this." _Well, that's that,_ she thought. _He'll never do it. I suppose we'll just sit in silence at opposite ends of the room for the next two hours. Wish I'd brought a book or a sketch pad or something._

"Oh, Weasley," he said. "You do have an annoying habit of underestimating me." He took the little flask between two of his long, knobbly fingers. "Cheers." Then he drained it in one gulp. "Oh." His face took on a strange expression, and he leaned back in the chair. "I don't feel very well."

Ginny watched him narrowly, half-suspicious that he was putting on some sort of act, even now. But his eyes stayed closed, and his brow grew pale and sweaty. There didn't seem to be anything melodramatic going on. Draco's breathing grew regular, and his hands relaxed; they'd been clutching the arms of the chair. _Is he asleep?_ she wondered.

"Malfoy?" she asked. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," he said.

Ginny pulled out her wand and ran it over Draco's arms. A faint blue glow followed the movement. _It did work!_ She slid it back into its holster and narrowed her eyes at him. _Might as well get down to business._

"Are you here for the reason that you say you are? Is it really about the Malfoy money?"

"Yes."

_Huh. Well, that isn't much of a surprise. I already believed that it was one of the reasons. It isn't really what I want to know, though. _"Tell me more."

He was silent.

_I suppose that was my own fault. I didn't ask a proper question._ "When you say that it's about the money, what exactly do you mean, Malfoy?"

Still nothing.

"Is this what you were talking about earlier? When you said that you were using a Dark spell to keep one particular sort of answer secret?" She leaned very close. His chair had somehow ended up moved back all the way, which meant that she was essentially leaning over the bed. She barely noticed that.

"Yes."

_Shite! I suppose I can't say I wasn't warned._ She leaned even further. The scent of roses drifted up to her nose from the bouquet on the table. A few of the petals had drifted down to the green coverlet.

"All right. Malfoy, are you here for _any_ other reason that's harmful, or that's meant to…" Ginny tried to frame the question so that he couldn't possibly wriggle out of it. She _had_ to think clearly. It was extraordinarily difficult to do so when she could feel the warmth radiating off the bare skin of his neck, and when the smell of chocolate and skin were somehow mingling with the roses. Against her will, she remembered how she'd wanted to wring his neck only a few hours ago, if she could get hold of him. If she could get hold of… if she could…

Suddenly, the image seized her mind and veered violently off with it. If she could get her hands around Draco's neck. If she could run her hands down his collarbone, and the warm living flesh of his shoulders. _If I could feel the planes and muscles of his bare chest, feel him quivering under my fingers-_

Appalled, Ginny jerked back.

"Any reason that's meant to hurt anyone?" she finished. "Anyone at all?"

"No," said Draco, without hesitation.

Ginny's mouth almost dropped open in astonishment. She pulled the newspaper clipping a little out of her purse.

"Are you absolutely sure that spell's working the way it should?" she hissed to the photograph-Bill.

He raised his head from a huddle with all of her photograph-brothers. She saw with a sinking feeling that he looked furious. "Yes; that spell doesn't go wrong. But what the hell is _Malfoy_ doing there? We don't like the way you're looking at him. Something's wrong, Gin, we can tell—" Bill broke off. George was digging into his ribs with an elbow.

"Where is she?" he was hissing.

"Oh, shite," groaned Bill. "I know exactly where that is! It's the Crystal Palace."

"The… oh. _Oh_."

"How would you even know what that is?" Bill turned on George.

"Ah… no reason…" George attempted to put on an innocent look. He'd been thirteen years old that summer, Ginny remembered, and quite precocious. He would have been curious enough to find out exactly what the Crystal Palace was. And she had no trouble at all believing that Bill would have known; he'd been twenty-one years old by then. Next to him, Charlie groaned and immediately ran to cover the photograph-Ginny's ears. She tried to wriggle away, her face a mask of avid curiousity.

"Are you joking? You mean that Draco Malfoy's even in the same _building_ with my grown-up real-sister? Let me at him!" yelled Ron in a mosquito-like voice. He swung ineffective punches at the edge of the frame. "I'll pulverize him, I'll smash that pretty face of his to pieces, I'll—"

Ginny quickly folded up the photograph and stuffed it into the very bottom of her purse. Then she looked back at Draco. He was staring blankly at the wall.

"Did you tell the truth about having been in Paris on June 8th?" she asked abruptly.

"Yes," he said.

"Is there any way at all that you physically could have been at the _Bas Bleu_ gallery, at my art opening, on that night?"

"No."

Ginny thought some more. "Do you remember saying those horrible things to me?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Well, let me refresh your memory, then. You told me that I wasn't pure anymore. That you didn't need me now. You told me that I wasn't any better than Marie. Do you honestly not _remember_ that?"

His face did not change at all. "No."

She turned her own face to the wall until she thought she could control her expression again. Then she turned back. "All right, Malfoy. So you really don't remember it. But the problem is that the last time you _do_ remember seeing me on Vendetta Island, you said…" She thought before speaking. She wanted to be completely accurate now. "It was what you didn't say. I asked if you'd loved Marie. You didn't say yes, but you couldn't say no, either. So you've got to tell me now. What was she to you?"

"A woman I loved, years ago," he said without hesitation.

"And what is she _now_?"

A very strange expression came over his face. "Things… have changed now. She's someone I knew long ago. She's not important anymore. I thought that she was, but I was wrong. I told you that I learned many things since I saw you last, Weasley, and that's one of the things I've learned. Marie belongs to the past. I've closed the door on her, and it will stay closed. She doesn't matter anymore. Does it matter to you?"

"Yes," said Ginny mechanically.

"Ah," said Draco. "When you were bending over the bed a few moments ago to ask me a question, what did you want to do?"

The spell might have been more powerful, but it was still the same. It cut both ways, and she was forced to answer. She had no choice at all. "I wanted to touch you, Malfoy. I wanted to put my hands on your naked body."

"Would you like to lean forward again?"

"Yes." It was true, so she did it. The warmth of Draco's body and the smell of his skin and the roses rushed over her.

"Would you like to lie down with me in that sumptuous bed?" he asked.

Ginny struggled not to speak, but the compulsion to answer him was too strong. "I would love it," she said.

"So would I," said Draco. "Just imagine it, Weasley."

She did imagine it. "What exactly would you do?" she asked. "Describe it quickly, Malfoy. We haven't much time."

"I would strip off every scrap of your clothing," he said. "I would caress every inch of your body. I would make you writhe and moan and scream in pleasure, Weasley. There's more. So much more. But you did say to be brief. Has anyone made you writhe since the last time I touched you?"

"No," she said.

"Ah," said Draco, and his voice was filled with dark satisfaction. "You're ready, aren't you? You crave what I could give you. You're hungry for pleasure, for release, for satisfaction. Aren't you?"

"Yes," said Ginny. "Could you give it to me, Malfoy?"

"Of course I could. Would you like to hear a secret?"

"I think so. Yes. I like to learn things," she said.

"A little learning is a dangerous thing." Draco crooked a finger, beckoning her to come closer. His eyes had gone very dark, she saw. She moved towards him. The smell of chocolate and roses and Draco was overwhelming. He brushed her hair aside and whispered, his lips tickling her ear.

"I can feel how eager you are. Every nerve in your body is trembling, Weasley. I wouldn't tease you. I could do it, of course. I can play your body like an instrument, stimulating every part of you. I could draw out your release; I could torment you to desperation, and that can be a delightful game as well. But you've gone too long without it now, and you've been very, very good. And, as a reward… there'd be no need to wait."

Draco kissed the spot just below her ear. Ginny couldn't breathe. The blood in her veins was drained and replaced with thick, molten lava.

"Moments away, Weasley," he murmured. "Only moments away. So why don't you get into that bed with me?"

"Loads and loads of very good reasons, Malfoy!" blurted Ginny. She whipped out her wand and pointed it at his head. "_Fermata!_"

He blinked at her, shaking his head. A very confused expression came over his face. She looked at him grimly, her chair shoved back all the way to the other side of the table.

"Interrogation over?" he asked lightly. "Yes? I'm sure you tortured all sorts of dreadful secrets out of me, Weasley. What are you going to do with me now?"


	45. A Taste of Chocolate

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: Bellatrix Amarante, Victoria Kathleen Wright, the childrens crusade, and I just sailed away.

Answers to more questions coming up!

Note: This fic is long. Really long. It's also complete. There are a lot—and I mean a LOT—of short fics out there. This is not one of them. The final chapter has been written and posted elsewhere. Fair warning has now been given about the fact that this is not a short fic, and it's now also been said that this IS a COMPLETED fic. It's not completed here yet, but it will all be posted. For those who only like short fics, this is probably NOT the fic for them.

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Giving chocolate to others is an intimate form of communication, a sharing of deep, dark secrets.

- _Milton Zelman, publisher of "Chocolate News"_

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"Uh… _excuse_ me?" asked Ginny, staring at him.

"That depends on what you've done," said Draco. "Although I imagine that I'd be more than happy to, if it means that you won't immediately drag me through the portal and turn me over to Potter with that tight-lipped look on your face that always lends you a fleeting and yet dreadfully unappealing resemblance to your mother. Do promise you'll never get that look again, Weasley."

"Are you really going to try to convince me that you don't remember anything that I just asked you, Malfoy? Or anything that you answered?"

"Are you on about that again?" asked Draco.

"You're bloody right I'm on about that again."

"Weasley, my mind's a blank slate when it comes to whatever's happened in the past…" He glanced at the elegant silver watch on his wrist. "Ten minutes, darling," it told him in a creamy female voice.

"Can't you give me a clue as to what it was, love?" he asked it in velvety tones.

"It's not allowed," the watch said regretfully.

"Come on. Not even the least… little…bit…" He smiled devilishly, widening his eyes in appeal.

"Stop seducing your timepiece, Malfoy!" said Ginny. "Look at me." Those were dangerous words, of course, as she soon realized, because he simply turned all of that appeal on _her._

"Weasley, this particular line of suspicion is become quite tiresome," said Draco, leaning back in the chair. "I don't know what you did. This certainly isn't the way that the spell worked back at the cottage in May. But I don't remember the slightest thing. There's really nothing else I can say or do that will convince you. I suppose that you'll either choose to believe me, or you won't." He shrugged.

She watched his face desperately as he spoke, pushing her chair closer and closer, _willing_ some sign to appear one way or the other on his face or body or hands or gestures that would give her some sort of hint. There were none. _Bill told me that the spell was working. At some point, I simply can't know any more than that. I can't drive myself mad that way. I think…I think that Malfoy really doesn't remember._ She shifted in the chair, moving forward further still. Her entire lower body was still throbbing.

"I suppose I might as well answer your questions, Malfoy," said Ginny, sliding her wand back into its holster. "The answer is… nothing. I'm not going to do anything with you now."

"How very generous of you," said Draco. "Of course, it's not as if you would have done anyway. We've got to take the delicate Weasley sensibilities into consideration. You wouldn't want to take the risk of, er, discovering Professor Flitwick in a compromising situation, shall we say…"

Ginny glared at him. "It's not that! The spell proved that you weren't trying to harm anyone. Now that I know that, I just… I can't allow Harry to get hold of you. All right? I just… oh, the gods only know what would happen."

"I don't think we have to ask the gods anything in order to figure that one out." Draco propped up his chin on his folded hands. 'Would you visit me at Azkaban, Weasley? Maybe you could bake me a cake with a file in it."

"Talk about playing the drama queen, Malfoy. The Ministry isn't sending people to Azkaban anymore. It hasn't happened since… oh, I don't know when."

"I can't say anything about what's happening to 'people' in any general common-herd sense of the term, but I can guarantee you that if Potter got his way, I'd be headed there in the first available boat."

"Well, he won't get hold of you. And I wish you'd stop talking about that awful place," said Ginny.

"But don't you think it's a good idea to make preparations? I could reserve a room in advance, at least. I wonder if I could get an ocean view," mused Draco. "Of course, I suppose you can never be sure if they'll actually honor any reservations that were made once one actually shows up on the premises. They'd probably charge me more on a WizardCard for the non-Dementor option and then tell me that it was a bit of joke, because it's Dementors all the way down. Still, Weasley…" He turned to her with a confidential sort of smile. "It does seem as if we ought to make arrangements in advance so that you'd be able to visit me there, if you know what I mean."

_Malfoy could never actually be sent to Azkaban. Never! Even Harry couldn't possibly get away with that. And yet… Oh, no…_ In an unwilling flash, the scenario she'd envisioned more than once back in May popped into Ginny's head again. Draco all alone in a cell in Azkaban, craving comfort. _She_ could come to his rescue with conjugal visits. A romantic first time at Azkaban, perhaps, aided by asking all the Dementors to turn their backs… But there was no way to arrange them if they'd never even kissed. Except that now, of course, they had, and more. So much more. _Oh, what's the matter with me! I put the words 'romance' and 'Malfoy' in the same sentence._ Surreptitiously, Ginny laid the back of her hand against her forehead to check if she had a fever, hoping that it looked like she was just brushing her hair back.

"Well, _if_ this ever happened, which it wouldn't, because Harry won't catch you, and Shacklebolt would never allow it even if he did, so you'll never come within a million miles of Azkaban," said Ginny, "then I suppose that I'd be willing to be included on some sort of general visitors' list."

"Oh no, I was thinking more along the lines of a very special visitors' list."

"What sort of visitors' list?"

"An exclusive list. Consisting of one."

Ginny jumped. He had taken her hand and was tracing the palm. "What sort of visits, Malfoy?"

"Visits that would provide comfort and consolation. That might get a lonely prisoner through the hideous, unending dark nights. That would help me bear up. That would give me the strength to go on. I mean… quite theoretically of course… one might be speaking about conjugal visits," said Draco.

"Wh-what?" _He absolutely has to remember more than he's letting on! Although considering the way that Malfoy's mind always works anyway… no, I suppose that's not necessary at all._

"Considering the kinder, gentler version of Azkaban I'm sure they're crafting these days, I imagine they'd allow conjugal visits. So would you come for me?"

"Do you need a copy of a wizarding dictionary?" she demanded. "I seem to remember that the word 'conjugal' has _something_ to do with being married! So Astoria can just drop in on you for those sorts of visits, Malfoy." _I ought to snatch my hand back. I'm going it now. Right this second. See… I'm doing it…_

"I really think I'd rather have a Dementor than Astoria," said Draco. "But I could put you on the extremely exclusive, one-person list. Of course, I can't very well convince them to send you to me unless we've already had some sort of contact to begin with. They might verify it by some sort of test, for all I know. And the permitted level of contact might very well depend on what sort of intimacy we'd already achieved, don't you think?"

"In your dreams, Draco Malfoy." _I was right. Malfoy doesn't deserve to go to Azkaban. It's much too good for him! He deserves to have his neck wrung!_

"Weasley, Weasley," he chided her. "This is all in theory. You might even call it a scientific sort of hypothesis. They didn't teach science at Hogwarts, of course."

"I've learned a bit about it in the past four months," said Ginny. "This is hardly the sort of thing that Charles Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould taught me."

"But empirical reasoning always works the same way," said Draco, tracing the sensitive skin just below her fingers. "Hear me out, Weasley. Just for the purposes of scientific inquiry. The hypothesis is that our activities to date would be sufficient to justify conjugal visits. The evidence is that in the past, we've kissed."

For some strange reason, Ginny's gaze fixated on his lips. The bottom one was very full and pink.

I've touched you. Just as I'm touching you. Well, Perhaps not quite like that…." He moved down to the fleshy based of her thumb. "Do you know what this is called, Weasley?"

She shook her head.

"It's known as the Mont of Venus. A full and rounded one is supposed to indicate a sensual nature…" Lightly, he pinched hers. Ginny felt it tingle. "Anyway," he continued, "you might remember the sort of touching that followed on the occasion back in May when you were amiable enough to request relief of certain, er, physical needs. In fact, we've done a number of things that couldn't really be mentioned in polite society. That's quite enough evidence, I think. … but if they do ask, you just may be required to provide a list. You do remember our activities in sufficient detail for that, don't you?"

"I have excellent memory," she said, in a voice that was supposed to be icy, but that apparently just melted.

"Are you sure? Do you need to be reminded just a bit more?" Draco began to tickle her palm. "I seem to remember performing this precise action elsewhere, as an enchanting prelude to another activity…" The smirk on his face was, she finally decided, just too much.

Ginny snatched her hand back. "Let go! If you're referring to what happened in the past between us, I was a bloody idiot to ever let you lay a hand on me, and I am never doing any of those things with you again. Never, ever, ever again, Malfoy."

"None of them?"

"No! "

"Not even one?" He moved closer. "The Ministry might require evidence of more recent activity in order to approve of the conjugal visit agreement, you know."

"You can just have conjugal visits with your hand, Malfoy!"

He held out his right hand and examined it. 'Hmm. We haven't really been acquainted in that capacity since I was fifteen years old. I'd prefer not to renew the relationship. Come on, Weasley."

Draco's lower lip was very full, thought Ginny. But his _upper_ lip was much thinner and sort of folded over. Why was it that they seemed to go together so well then? They ought to have looked more mismatched. He grinned at her, and she realized that she'd been staring much too long.

"Not even one… little… kiss?" he purred.

She reached out and shoved him onto the floor with a crash. The momentum pushed her backwards; too late, she felt herself herself overbalance and fall backwards in the other direction.

"Well," said Draco, idly examining the wreckage of the two chairs. "Since you put it that way, Weasley."

They sat next to each other on the bed. She could see that his legs were casually crossed, and she could feel him watching her out of the corner of her eye. She sat stiffly, her legs swinging. Sometimes, she just hated being short. She could _feel_ how much taller he was at times like this.

Finally, Draco gave a regretful sigh. "I suppose you think that I was trying to manipulate you, don't you?"

"I don't _think_, Malfoy. I _know._"

"I was only trying to explain to you how the conjugal-visit possibility might be expressed as a scientific hypoth—"

"Don't waste your breath. Two of the greatest scientists of the last two hundred years live in my bookshelf. Well, I suppose they don't exactly _live_, because they're ghost authors, but you know what I mean. Darwin explained to me how he came up with the theory of evolution, and it didn't seem to include anything about kissing."

"That's because he lived during the Victorian age. What about Stephen Jay Gould?"

"He _somehow_ managed to come up with the theory of punctuated equilibrium at Harvard without talking about… uh…"

"Begging for sex?" Draco asked innocently.

"Shut _up_, Malfoy!" she snarled. "Do you want me to break this bed?" _Oh dear,_ she realized, just a second too late. _That, uh… that really didn't sound good, did it?_

"I think you've broken enough for now, Weasley." Draco sat back, dropping his gaze. He looked like a cat allowing a mouse room to rest, she thought. But that never meant that the predator had let go of its prey.

"Are you going to leave me alone now?" she asked, tensing all her muscles to spring off the bed if necessary.

"I'll back off as much as you like, Weasley." He spread out his hands, looking as innocent as a panther on the prowl, in her opinion.

She watched him warily. "Then what the hell was all that about, Malfoy?"

"You've indicated your lack of interest. We won't talk about it anymore."

"Nothing doing." Her eyes flashed. "I want to know why you put me all the shite you did in the last twenty minutes, Malfoy."

He shrugged. "Well, we've got to pass the time somehow, haven't we? Relax. Did you really think that I was doing anything more than taking the mickey out of you?"

_Yes. No. I had to think that, Malfoy, because I know what you tried to do before I spoke the counterspell that took us both out of in vino veritas. And even if you don't remember it, I do!_

"Right." She blinked. Her eyes were prickling. Something in this room must have been irritating them, of course. "You've still got an hour or two to kill, after all. I should have known that it was nothing more than a game to you, Malfoy."

"Oh, I always enjoy teasing you, Weasley. But I'll tell you this much, and you'd better believe that I'm as serious as the grave now." He templed his fingers and looking at her over them. "If you truly think that Potter wouldn't get me sent to Azkaban, you're fooling yourself. You believe the propaganda that the Ministry's spewing out on the subject of the brave new wizarding world, I suppose?"

"I don't believe any such thing," she said heatedly. "Don't call me a fool, Draco Malfoy."

"Then don't act like one. Open your eyes, Weasley."

"They are open! I'm just not falling for your little seduction attempts, Malfoy.  
She leaned across the table towards him. "Look, I already know that the Department of Mysteries is behind Harry a hundred percent now. That's not news to me. My brother Percy and my father both work at the Ministry; I hear loads of things-"

"Well, then you ought to know what's really going on there. It's the entire Ministry; Weasley, it's more than only a rogue department."

She was six or seven years old, and her father was the wisest, best man there was. He took her to the Ministry one day, explaining that it was where he went to do dreadfully important work. _It's the most important place in our world,_ he had said. _It's the foundation of everything we have, everything that we are, as a wizarding world. Do you understand, Ginny?_ She hadn't, not quite, she was simply too little. But she had nodded solemnly, believing with all her might. The Ministry was a rock, and her world was built on it. She had never truly stopped believing that, somehow, even through that month of loss and disillusionment in May. The Department of Mysteries was one thing; she'd never trusted them to begin with, and they would always be tied up with Harry in her mind now. He was the one who'd brought her there in the first place during that awful time when they all thought that Sirius had been kidnapped during her fourth year, after all. But for the rot to have set into the whole Ministry… all of it… it was as if the universe itself had shifted too much, too fast. Ginny felt too unsettled for words.

"Look, a lot of this frightens me as well. How can you think it wouldn't, Malfoy? But some of the laws on gathering evidence were changed, Malfoy. Shacklebolt saw to that. "

"Yes, those laws were supposedly changed, weren't they? That had already happened by the end of May. You heard me remind Potter of that fascinating fact in that alley, just before he hauled you off to the Ministry—and the world likely would have been a better place if I'd vaporized him on the spot before he did that, except that it wouldn't have done any good; all of the other Aurors were there as well. And yet they were able to get away with questioning you at the Ministry, Weasley."

"I've tried to put that time behind me," Ginny said abruptly. "I've had to, Malfoy. I've had no choice but to move on."

"Oh? So you've _moved on_, as you put it, from the memory of being dragged to St. Mungo's and forced to undergo the Imperius Test?" His voice was like electric velvet, needling her, slipping under her skin.

_The Imperius Test!_ The impotent anger she'd felt, that day. The _rage_. "No. I'll never forget. They thought you'd put Imperius on me; they thought you'd—forced me to do other things, they wouldn't believe me when I told you I hadn't, and of course I'll never forget it! And then—" She closed her eyes. "Then they tricked me into the Department of Mysteries two days later because they pretended that you were there."

Draco stared at her. "_What?_"

"You heard me, Malfoy. I was afraid that they'd question you, that they'd use Cruciatus or maybe even something worse, for all I knew, and I couldn't let them do that. So I sneaked in, and then—"

"You fucking _idiot._"

"Is that the sort of thanks I get, Malfoy. After I risked gods-only-know-what to get in there? I should've let them torture you to death, or whatever they were going to do."

"Listen to me. Don't you realize what could have happened to you? How bloody stupid can you get?"

"Pretty thick, apparently, or else I would've known better than to try to save your sorry arse!" Ginny slammed her fist down on the table between them. "Yes! Fuck, Malfoy, yes. I do think that Harry would find a way. There. Are you happy now? I do. . He'd get you put away in Azkaban, and I don't think that anyone there would do anything about it. And… and if you haven't tried to hurt anyone… then no matter what else you've done, Malfoy, you don't deserve that… "

She looked away; she couldn't keep her voice steady anymore, she wanted to put her hands over her face or cry or scream, because something in her felt as if it was about to come unmoored, come loose, come apart. An image came to her mind as swiftly and suddenly as if a Muggle film had been unreeled before her eyes, and at last, she understood that she had been trying to suppress it all along, from the moment that Draco began to talk about being sent to Azkaban

Draco in a courtroom at the Wizengamot, sentenced to Azkaban. None of the Malfoy money did him any good at all. It had become a cruel joke instead, because every bit of it had been seized and confiscated. Nobody stood up for him; nobody was allowed to testify for him, or help him. Now he was being walked down a long, dark hall with blood-red papered walls past a series of doors by two guards, one on each side. They opened one and roughly pushed him into a room by himself. Blood ran down his hand from something sharp set into the frame, but there was nobody to wash or bandage it, nobody to care for his injuries in any way. The door rang shut behind him. Now he sat motionless on a bed as time passed and passed and passed. The light was faded and dim even at high noon, and the nights went on forever. Finally, his bright head drooped, and his silvery eyes dulled, and he lost hope. Something horrible twisted in Ginny's heart, sharp-edged and ragged, and blood flowed like tears.

"So you do care what happens to me, then," said Draco softly.

Ginny's breath caught in a sob. She looked up at him, frightened. _What was that? A dream, or a vision, or was I just imagining it for some bizarre reason? Or was it my worst fears creeping up on me, the ones that I couldn't hide from myself anymore?_ Whatever that had been, she couldn't bear to think of that again, couldn't bear to picture it again. No, never again. She would _die_ if she did.

He leaned all the way back against the bed, and the light hit his cheekbones just so. The beauty of his face was heartbreaking.

"I can't." She shook her head. "I can't." She didn't even know, herself, what she meant anymore.

"But what if I really were in Azkaban, Weasley? What then? Would you come to me?"

"I—I—"

"Could you refuse me just the little things—just the least little things. Haven't you ever heard of a prisoner's last requests?"

"Like you'd be happy with that? You would want everything from me, Malfoy."

"I could be happy. I can show you. Loose your hair."

"I'm not playing this game."

He was propped against the headboard, his face in shadow. "Please."

Slowly, she took the pins and elastic out of her long hair and let it down over her shoulders.

"Ah. Now… if you can stand it… imagine that we're in Azkaban. Imagine that this bed has become a cot in a cell."

Against her will, she saw in her mind's eye what she had already imagined.

"I've been sentenced there for life. I'm losing all hope. That happens very quickly, you know."

"How do you know that, Malfoy?"

"Never mind that just now. And then against all hope, the door opens, and you come to me, Weasley. Think, just think of what you could bring me. You'd be giving life to a doomed man, doomed to rot in the hell of Azkaban and never see the sun again." He beckoned to her. As if in a dream, she followed his hand across the bed.

"I'd be locked away for the rest of my life," he whispered, "and whatever you may think of me, I wouldn't have done anything to merit that, Weasley."

She was close enough to him now to feel the warmth of his body."Malfoy, what would have you done that would've made anybody at the Ministry think that you deserved to be there?"

"I told you. I wouldn't have needed to do much of anything, really. I might never have meant to harm anyone. But sometimes that's not enough. Good intentions aren't enough to keep you out of trouble, little Gryffindor. Don't you know that yet?"

She shook her head.

"You carry sun and wind and fresh air, and you're sweeter than all the roses in all the gardens of all the earth, and you've brought a breath of it all to me in this hell. Do give me some sun. You're carrying it all in your hair." He picked up a strand and brought it to his face, sniffing, drawing her even closer.

Everything was strangely familiar, as if she were moving very slowly through a voluptuous dream. _I know,_ she thought. _I know what it is. That dream at the cottage in May, when I finally entered the room in Draco's heart. It was the only time I ever managed to do it, and I found that very young Draco waiting for me on the bed and crying. He needed me, but the truth is, I needed him just as much. _

"Closer," he whispered. His hands had crept around her lower back now, and she let him pull her even closer, crawling towards him.

_Just as much as I need him now._

Ginny was hovering over him where he lay on the bed. His hands were gently pulling her down towards him all the way. He would stop if she asked him to, she knew. But her body didn't see why it should be denied something it wanted so very, very, very much. So she bent down until her lips touched his, and then she fell all the way into his mouth and began to explore it thoroughly, because it clearly contained some substance that was necessary for continued life. It just might have been chocolate.


	46. Dangerous Visions

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially Victoria Kathleen Wright.

_Break that liplock on Malfoy!_ her rational mind shrieked. _Get away from him this instant. Pull back. Get to the other side of the bed. Hurry up._

_Just hand over the chocolate and nobody gets hurt,_ purred the larger, sex-crazed portion of her cerebrum, and she kept right on kissing Draco in a never-ending attempt to access the extra-dark, creamy, utterly decadent supply.

"Now that I've been thoroughly snogged," he whispered when they came up briefly for air, "you could sneak into Azkaban for a kiss. But think about how low I'd have sunk by the time you got there, Weasley. I'd have drowned deep."

She pictured him slumped on the side of the bed, staring at shadows on the wall. She saw herself kneeling next to him, shaking his shoulder, trying to kiss his stiff lips. But it stopped there. She didn't know if he was going to respond. _Oh, gods, I can't see what'll happen next!_ It was impossible to hold that picture in her mind's eye for one more second. It could not be endured. To blot it out, she pressed her lips to Draco's neck, his throat, the bit of chest that peeped above his linen shirt, and he threw his head back and sighed and pulled her to him, and then he was kissing her everywhere too.

"More," he whispered, and he didn't wait for her. He was unbuttoning her blouse. "I can't live another moment without that. I'll die in Azkaban if I don't hold your breasts in my hands, Weasley. You don't want me to die, do you?"

No, Ginny didn't want him to die, and suddenly just the _thought_ of him holding her so intimately made her weak. "Please," she whispered, and she felt his fingers on the back of her bra. In another moment, it would come undone, and then—

_Crash!_

Someone, or something, had fallen against the door from the other side, so hard that three wine glasses jumped from the shelf above the wet bar and smashed on the little patch of hardwood floor. Ginny froze above Draco. Her look of shock was mirrored on his own face, she saw.

"What the hell was that?" she hissed.

"Er, nothing," he said. "Nothing worth worrying about, anyway. Aren't you more worried about me sinking hopelessly into the hell of Azkaban? You could save me from despair, if I could only hear you moan in that delightful way of yours when I-"

Muffled giggling came from the other side of the door. "Oh, _Flitty!_" breathed a female voice.

"Time for a bit more of the old rumpy-pumpy, Dev, my dear!" the horribly familiar male voice chuckled roguishly.

Ginny immediately decided that nothing in the world was, had ever been, or would ever be less sexy than hearing Professor Flitwick use the phrase "rumpy-pumpy" in any context whatsoever. Reality hit her as thoroughly as one of the shards of broken glass might have done, and she stared down at Draco's flushed face. He was smirking at her. Yes! It was definitely a smirk now, she decided. And he was almost done unfastening her bra. She reached back and slapped his hands away.

A hurt look came over his face, and then the mask dropped. "That's really not alleviating my despair, Weasley."

"You don't know what despair is, Malfoy," Ginny said grimly, jamming her blouse back over her head. "But you will do, if you don't keep your hands to yourself from now on!"

"I like that," he said, sounding indignant. Quite unjustifiably so, in her opinion. "I seem to remember that you're the one who initiated the original kiss. Unless my memory fails me?"

Inwardly, Ginny kicked herself. Draco's memory was doing no such thing. _I really did kiss him first!_ "Shite, what got into me?" she moaned.

"Nothing yet. But you shouldn't blame yourself," he said. "I'm quite hard to resist."

His smirk was worse than ever, she decided. She longed to slap it off his face. "Oh, I can blame myself, all right," she said. "I'm an idiot. You rabbited on about being stuck in Azkaban and touched my hair and talked about how it carried the sun, and made me feel sorry for you, and I just fell for your line of shite again!"

"I really _might_ end up shipped to Azkaban. Can you blame me for lining up arrangements for conjugal visits in advance?" He quirked an eyebrow at her. "You did seem more than willing to go along with the plan, Weasley."

"That's because you've somehow driven me temporarily mad," said Ginny, swinging her legs over him. "You're got me hypnotized or something. I never should have even sat down on the same bed with you after those chairs got broken. It's all probably part of your evil plot."

"Be reasonable, Weasley. I don't have an evil plot." Draco sat up and held his hand out to her coaxingly.

"You always have an evil plot! You're utterly incapable of crossing a room without a detailed evil plot in place."

"So you really think that's why you kissed me?" He looked rather amused.

"Yes!" Ginny said recklessly.

"I see." Draco leaned back, stretching in a way that did fascinating things to the pale, sinewy chest muscles revealed by the half-unbuttoned linen shirt. Ginny could see that his skin was imprinted with little red marks from her mouth as far down as his flat male nipples. Was that actually a _bite_? She peered closer to see.

"The view's much better from down here, Weasley." Draco opened his arms invitingly.

The urge to slide into them was overwhelming. Irresistible. That was no figure of speech. Gravity itself was pulling her down to where he lay on that bed, as if the cushioned green coverlet and large fluffy pillows and thick feather mattress had reformed themselves into a whirling black hole, with Draco as its sumptuous, smirking heart. She was falling down to the bed. Down, down, down; no matter how hard she tried to catch herself, she was going to end up lying on top of Draco, pressed into him as far as she could go, both of them sunk deeply into…

_The bed._

She was crouched almost all the way down on the luxurious four-poster bed, so far that she had jerk her head up to stare at the carved wooden frame. She was still propping herself up on her elbows above Draco, and it felt as if it was taking all her strength not to just let herself go.

"Yes?" he asked, looking up at her. "Would you like to trade positions?"

Ginny shoved herself off him and onto the floor, where she tried to stand and finally settled for sitting. It felt like moving a thousand tons of weight.

"That's it!" she said aloud. "It's got to be this bed. Malfoy, it's the bed, isn't it? That's all it is!"

" I certainly wouldn't say that. "

"I mean, the bed is what's causing this effect!"

"It's a great deal more comfortable than the floor. Weasley, why don't you come back here? We were rather rudely interrupted, don't you think?"

"Malfoy, you tell me right now exactly what's going on with this bed, or I'm whipping my wand out again! And speaking of tools, if you want to keep yours in good working order…" Ginny looked at him threateningly.

Draco gulped. "Very well, Weasley. But if you don't care for what you hear, I'll thank you to keep in mind that you forced me to this information session. A really first-class bed would make our activities more pleasant at first, in my opinion. But I'm also very partial to couches, well-carpeted floors, settees—"

"I don't want to hear about just any old bed! I want to hear about _this_ one, even though I think I already know."

"Grassy fields, the padded floors of dungeons, the back seats of Muggle Rolls-Royces, if properly expanded—"

"If it wasn't for this bed, I never would've even thought of having sex with you."

"Up against random walls, in alleyways if quite reliable Privacy charms are used, in the middle of furniture showrooms—"

"Malfoy, shut up! Answer my question about this bed."

"Well, which is it, Weasley? I can't very well do both."

Strictly in her own mind, Ginny had to admit that he had a point. "It doesn't matter anyway," she said. "I can't believe a word you say, Malfoy." She scrambled to her feet and started towards the door.

A new cascade of giggles started from the other side.

"Does great big Papa Flitty want to come out and play?" trilled the female voice.

Ginny immediately clapped her hands over her ears. After several minutes, she cautiously removed them.

"Weasley, you don't want to know," said Draco from behind her. "Let's just say that I'll never think of the phrase "doing some ladies' tailoring' in quite the same way again. Oh, by the way, were you planning to go somewhere?"

"I am staying on this side of the room for the next two hours," said Ginny through gritted teeth, "or for the rest of my life, whichever comes first, as long as I don't have to go anywhere near that bed, ever again."

"Hmm. It's a plan. Not a good one, but a plan," said Draco. "Would you like me to bring you a pillow?"

"I'd like you to go away."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure. I'm completely immune to you, now that we're away from that evil bed."

"I see," purred Draco. "So if I kissed you on this side of the room, I suppose you wouldn't feel a thing. Is that it?"

"Yes, that's it," said Ginny defiantly.

"Just how sure _are_ you?" He leaned on the door, standing above her.

He was awfully tall, thought Ginny. Really excessively well-built for being so thin, too. The fact irritated her beyond all endurance. "Completely sure. Go ahead! Try!"

"I was under the impression that you didn't _want_ any more snogging from me. But since you ask so nicely…"

Draco bent his head down towards her. She reached up instinctively, and he intertwined his fingers with hers, pushing her against the door. He examined her for a long moment. Then he dipped in and kissed her, _kissed_ her, so utterly and completely and his mouth was so slippery and sweet and she arched her back up towards him and she was panting and he was breathing harshly and then he pulled back from her and the air was cold on her lips.

"So," he said. "You didn't feel a thing, I suppose?"

Ginny hit him on the chest, but not very hard, because her bones were tingling and weak and crying out for more of his sinful kisses. "What's really happening here? Fuck, Malfoy! What is it? Tell me what it is or I'll—"

"Well, I suppose I could share a few things with you, although you really might have thought of them yourself."

"Tell me every detail, immediately, or I'll-"

"Kiss me to death?"

She was wearing very hard shoes, thought Ginny. Maybe she could break one of his toes if she stomped hard enough.

"Think, Weasley. It's really no more than common sense. This room is part of the Crystal Palace," said Draco, "the most ancient house devoted to the arts of pleasure for the amusement of purebloods. You already know that. Pleasure is refined to a very high art here, and every inch of the place is imbued with the most ancient sort of primal magic. What sort of effect do you think that all of it is likely to have, from top to bottom? You're a very clever girl, Weasley. Guess." His hands slid down the wall to the side of her head, and Ginny groaned. _I should've known._

"It isn't just the bed," she said.

"No, it most certainly isn't just the bed," agreed Draco. "You're all flushed, and your pupils are very large. How delicious you look, Weasley. I could eat you up, you know. Let's kiss some more."

"We're not going to kiss anymore!" Ginny ruthlessly squelched the very large part of her brain that was loudly crying out in agreement with Draco's idea. It wasn't easy, particularly since her entire body seemed to have formed an alliance with it. "I get it, Malfoy. The entire _house_ probably makes people want to have sex from the second they step into it, and it gets worse the longer they stay. I should've figured it out before. Fine. It does. So what? That doesn't do anything except to prove my point even more than I thought it would. That's all this is, what we're both feeling—"

Too late, she realized her mistake. Draco grinned at her. "So you do feel something, do you, Weasley?

The grin was what did it, she decided. It was just too _much_. No woman could have been expected to put up with that smug grin. And then there was the way he was leaning back, elaborately giving her a bit of room so that _she'd_ be the one to make the next move, sure that she would, arrogantly confident that she'd jump his bones now, oh… the Wizengamot never would have voted to convict, no matter what she did. _Not if there were any witches on the jury!_

Without thinking it through at all, Ginny leaned forward and gave Draco a shove. That was the entire problem, of course; she realized that later. She hadn't thought about it at all before she did it. But she did, and then everything changed.

Her movement caught him totally off guard. He stumbled, and fell backwards. The grin was wiped off his face immediately. Ginny was meanly glad. But she didn't realize until much too late that the three broken wine glasses lay in shards on the floor right behind him. _He_ saw it, though, and he tried to turn, tried to put his hands out, to catch himself. _Oh, if he only hadn't done._

Blood. There was so much blood. _My hands are covered in blood, Tom…_ Ginny gave her head a violent shake. She _had_ to stay in the present. She was kneeling over Draco, and his arms were streaked in his own blood, and his face was white. There was a high awful singing and buzzing in her head, but she couldn't break down. Other images were fighting for space in her mind's eye, but she couldn't let them, not now. _She sat in the Gryffindor common room with Harry and Hermione and Ron on a terrible afternoon during Harry's sixth year, when he'd used Sectumsempra to nearly kill Draco. Nobody had spoken up for him. Nobody had tried to save him. He lay by himself in the hospital ward. She forced Harry to hide the book, and then she went to Draco and stood over him through a long long night, and pressed her lips to his forehead as he slept, and then almost woke to call her by Marie's name. She hadn't known then that this was what he was really doing, but she understood it now. He had been so pale, so close to death. Just like he must be at this moment… _No… _no!_

She pulled her wand out and ran it over his wounds, mumbling every Healing spell she knew. She yanked shards of glass out of his wrists and palms, and he grimaced, giving little cries of pain. "Please don't die, please don't die," she begged under her breath, barely even knowing what she was saying, and she poured all of her will and all of her magic into his jagged cuts until they began to heal. They would leave only fine silvery scars now, she knew, joining the others.

"Please. Please don't die. Don't die, Malfoy, don't die," she kept repeating, until he finally said, "Oh, dry up, Weasley, I'm not going to die. Shh, shh, I'm not going to die. I won't die. I promise. I'll never, ever die. I'll live forever, and so will you. How's that? Neither of us will ever die. Shh. Shh, stop crying."

His words were so utterly over the top that she almost had to smile. She knew that he wasn't going to bleed to death. All those flashbacks from the past had suddenly intruded on her inner eye, overlapping, blurring, worse than they'd been in a very long time, but they were all fading away now. Draco's soft whispers and the feel of his big hands stroking her back were lifelines to the present, and if her mind shied away from the reasons why he might comfort her so, well, that wasn't important right now. She laid her head against her chest for one last moment.

But then the vision flooded her.

It wasn't new. It was the same one. She saw Draco in Azkaban again, and his hand was bleeding as he sat on the bed, just as it had done before, with nobody to care for it, or for him. Nobody came. Nobody would. But what she understood for the first time was that she herself was standing at the door, looking at him. He held out his bleeding hand to her, and he spoke her name, without hope. What happened next was her choice.

She started sobbing all over again. He couldn't make her stop, so finally he took her all the way into his arms where they sat on the floor and rocked her back and forth, and her unbound hair fell over them both like a shroud.

Ginny's tears finally stopped flowing, long after Draco's blood had done the same thing. She took several deep, long breaths, flipped her hair back, and glanced carefully around the room. Draco's face was still turned away from her, and she was devoutly thankful for that, because it gave her at least a couple of minutes to try to figure out what the hell she was going to say to him.

Draco pushed her back gently and tried to help her to her feet. She shook her head, watching him closely as he got up. He seemed to be all right, and she was devoutly glad for that. She didn't think she could have kept it together at all if he'd collapsed to the floor in a heap, or something similar.

_He's still standing there,_ she thought after what must have been at least five minutes. _What am I supposed to do? Why doesn't he go back to the bed or something?_ She felt him pushing the hair back from her face.

"Why, Weasley," he said lightly. "You were really quite upset."

Ginny nodded once, stiffly.

"I'm flattered."

He didn't sound flattered; he sounded amused, she thought. The idea of killing him with her bare hands still sounded rather appealing. That, or holding him as tightly as she could and protecting him from everything that might ever harm him, ever again. Both thoughts absolutely horrified her.

"Drama over? Yes? Am I getting the silent treatment now? I suppose this means that you're still set on that plan involving your spending the next hour or so on one side of the room, virtue still intact, and my spinning unsuccessful evil plots on the other. And if I so much as inch a toe over in your direction, you'll whip out your wand and blast me to Valhalla. Isn't that right? Or maybe something even _worse._" Draco waited, clearly expecting her to say something that would match his own flippancy. He was going to have a long, long wait in that case, thought Ginny.

"Well, Weasley?" he asked. "Just what awful fate do you have planned for me?"

"Conjugal visits in Azkaban!" she burst out.

She heard his indrawn breath. "Really?" he asked. "What led to this sudden change of heart?"

There was an amused look on his face, and that fact was making her heart hurt almost as much as the thought of him slumped on a cot in Azkaban. "Shut up, Malfoy. Do you think I'm happy about it? I'm not. Maybe this really _isn't_ caused by anything at all except the room and the fact that we're stuck in the Crystal Palace. I still think you lured me here in the first place. I still think you're the king of evil plots. The duke. Maybe the earl. At least the baronet—"

"You're babbling," said Draco, and he stopped her words by kissing her again.

"We can make an arrangement," he said, when she had to breathe. "You agree to come to me in Azkaban and visit the poor lonely prisoner, and in return, I'll give you—"

She hit him in the chest again, cursing under her breath.

"What was that for?"

"Everything!" Mostly him, of course. There was no way to match up his blank, hopeless face in her vision with the snide smirk she saw now. But it was for herself too, because that unbridgeable chasm wasn't enough to make that horrible vision go away.

Draco clucked his tongue. "First you heal my wounds and possibly save my life, then you want to comfort me in Azkaban, then you apparently want to kill me—can't you make up your mind, Weasley?"

_Oh, my mind's made up, all right._ She desperately wished that it wasn't. "I don't want an arrangement," she said between clenched teeth.

"Then what _do_ you want?"

_To turn back time. To never have met you in that coffee shop on the day I caught Harry in bed with that blonde skank. Everything started going wrong then!_

"It's not about what I _want_, Malfoy—"

"But of course it is," said Draco. "Weasley, please think this thing through, if you can. Weren't we having fun just a few minutes ago? We were enjoying ourselves immensely. Kiss me again. Think of it as simply a sort of scientific experiment." He leaned towards her, and the scent of chocolate was overpowering. "You don't have to take anything more than a kiss, if you don't want to. Try a another kiss. Just a kiss. I won't bite. Well, I wouldn't do, unless you specifically asked for one. Or are you afraid? Hmm. I didn't know that Weasleys were cowards at heart after all."

"I am not a coward! You don't understand-"

"Then prove it," Ginny heard him say just before she attacked his mouth desperately and fell into a dark whirlpool. She vaguely heard his voice again after some unidentifiable length of time, and felt his hand on the back of her head, pulling her away.

"I feel so cheap, Ginny," he sighed theatrically. "You're using me. I'm not simply a sex object, you know. Ah well. I suppose I can live with it."

Her eyes flashed at him. "I didn't do that because I was using you for anything, Malfoy!"

"Oh? Would you care to enlighten me as to the reason, then?"

It was too much. The fear and anger and frustration surged up in Ginny and boiled over. "Because you were sitting on the edge of the bed and you were _hurt_ and nobody was there to help you, and then you looked up at me and there wasn't any hope left in your eyes and you held out your hand to me, and you said you'd been waiting so _long,_, and you were _crying_, Malfoy. And I could have helped you, and I didn't, and I can't live with the knowledge now. I have to help you if it happens again. I have to or I'll die."

Draco jerked back from her, shock written all over his face. "_What?_"

"Azkaban," Ginny whispered. "Malfoy, I saw you in Azkaban."

A series of emotions chased each other over his face so quickly that Ginny couldn't be sure she'd actually seen any of them; then the mask clicked back into place. "Well. It _would_ be a good idea to get the matter of conjugal visits settled all round then, wouldn't it?"

"Don't you dare joke about this, Malfoy!"

He caught her hands. "Don't hit me again, Weasley. You have a wicked right cross. All right, I'll be as serious as the grave, if you like. Whatever it was that you thought you saw, I have a very hard time believing it was a true vision."

"Why not? You're the one who's so sure you're headed for Azkaban."

"You're very overwrought at the moment. You simply can't be sure about the truth of anything you think you see, and let's face facts, Weasley… you never were exactly Head Girl in Divination." He stroked her hand soothingly, or at least Ginny thought that the motion was supposed to be soothing. It felt a lot more like he was touching her with fire.

"But it's so real," she said almost pleadingly. "It's almost as if…" _Oh, gods._ Ginny closed her eyes. She had _not_ wanted to tell him about this; she had been sure that she wouldn't. But she wasn't a coward, she thought bleakly. He'd been wrong about that. She took a deep breath, and she asked the question that she instinctively knew was going to pave the road to real disaster.

"Malfoy, didn't you ever wonder exactly why I was mad enough to set this whole thing in motion in the first place? And don't you dare say any bloody stupid things along the lines of how impossible you are to resist."

"No. I don't know why you did it, Weasley," Draco said quietly.

She started speaking very rapidly. "There was something specific that set it off. It was why I asked Colin to find Daphne, and that was why Dean started following both of them. On the first of October, I had a dream about you, Malfoy. You were standing in the doorway of my bedroom, and you reached out your hand to me. You were coming to me from a very great distance—I can't say how I knew that when you weren't even moving, but you were. You reached out your hand to me, and then you said what you've never said to me. You called me by my name. 'Ginny.' That's what you said. Ever since that night, I've been driven almost mad by wondering if there was anything real about that dream, or not. I've tried all sorts of ways to find out, but there really is only one way, isn't there? By asking you. So I will ask you?" She looked into his silvery, mirrored eyes as deeply as she could. "Was it only a dream, Malfoy? Or was it real?"

"It was only a dream," he said.

Ginny turned her head, her eyes filling with fierce tears of disappointment. He took her face in his hands to turn it back.

"But it was _my_ dream as well."

She was stunned for a few moments, unable to believe or absorb what she had heard. "You mean… you dreamed exactly the same thing?"

He nodded. "On the very same night, too. The first of October."

"What… what did it mean?"

"I don't pretend to know."

"But, Malfoy," she persisted, "_were_ you in Azkaban?"

"I don't have the least idea where I was. I felt… despair. That's all I can tell you." His voice was low and harsh, almost as if the words were dragged from him. "It was mine, as much as yours. It was real."

_He wasn't planning to tell me this, either,_ Ginny realized. "What could all of this mean?" she muttered, half to herself. And then she was afraid that she knew.

Draco was still mumbling something to himself. She reached up and grabbed his head. He looked startled and caught off-guard, and she took advantage of his weaknesses to kiss him one more time. He made some sort of noise in his throat that she thought might have been a protest, but it turned into a moan of pleasure almost instantly. Ginny knew what she was looking for this time. She couldn't have described it in words, but once she knew what it had to be, she recognized it instantly, like the spark of a particularly fiery hex. She groaned, partly in arousal and partly in horror. Partly, too, in the knowledge that no matter how horrified she was, that wouldn't be enough to squelch the arousal part.

"What was that about?" asked Draco warily.

"Fuck!" Ginny stomped her foot. "Malfoy, we've still got a bond."

The shock she'd seen on his face earlier was nothing compared to now, she decided. But she didn't get a chance to study it for more than a millisecond, because he made a sudden move towards her and then the dark electricity took over her entire body, seizing every bit of her over and over and over again. When Draco finally pulled his head back slightly, she was so dizzy that he had to hold her up.

"You're right," he said. His eyes were lit up with triumph; oh, it was all over him, from smirk to slouch to careless, self-assured stance, Ginny saw with growing fury. He'd clearly found out something that pleased him very much.

"What a fool I was to not grasp this instantly," he murmured, his lips still inches from hers. "There's clear evidence of a bond. Quite enough to qualify you for conjugal visits to Azkaban, Weasley. And the best part of all, the _very_ best part, is that I know you haven't allowed the oh-so-noble Dean Thomas to lay a finger on you. Don't bother to deny it; I can feel that he hasn't. It's why the bond remains unbroken." The smirk widened. It was very much the look of a man who believed he had regained the upper hand, Ginny realized. "So. Shall we get started on the most recent proof required for those conjugal visits, in order to seal the deal?"

She seized his head and kissed him as hard as she could, molding her body to every line of his, searching his mouth for the click and sizzle of the bond. He jumped slightly, and she knew she'd found what she was looking for.

Draco's eyes were very large and dark when she let him go, the silvery gray almost swallowed up by his dilated pupils. He had to swallow a few times before he could speak. "Well. Well, uh… I, uh.. see that you're more than willing, Weasley. So, how about if we… over on that bed, and…" His words trailed off.

"I just learned a bit about you, too, Malfoy," said Ginny. "You haven't consummated your marriage with Astoria."


	47. Beginning to Fall

Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially Victoria Kathleen Wright.

A/N: This is the R-rated version. Yes, there's an NC-17 version, but it obviously can't be hosted here. It's over on the FIA archive.

~~~  
Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.  
- _Patti Smith_

~~~

_There. Ha! I've shown him now. Let's see what you have to say to that, Draco Malfoy!_

Was that what she'd been thinking when she'd said what she had?

_I knew it. I knew you couldn't have done, any more than I could've let Dean Thomas touch me, even though he's probably a much better person than you and me put together, and Astoria is a raving bitch._ Or that.

Or maybe she'd been thinking impossible things that she wouldn't even whisper in her own mind now. Those could have been what she really meant.

Whatever any of her motivations might have been, they all drained out of her mind like boiling water from a cup when the seconds ticked by and he didn't say anything in return. Ginny felt small and strangely ashamed. She didn't know what she'd expected Draco to say or do in response, but surely not… _silence._

"I, uh… I didn't mean…" she began. But then, had no idea what she _hadn't_ mean, either.

Cold air struck the entire front of her body. He'd stepped away from her. Ginny's heart sank. When she dared to glance at him, she saw that he was bending down, not meeting her eyes.

And then her feet left the ground, and her body swooped up in the air. She clutched onto Draco for support, the world flew rapidly past her, and she landed flat on her back in the huge bed. He was half on top of her in a second, all of his lean muscles pressing and shifting against hers, his mouth and hands everywhere, his words pouring passionately into her ears as he moved next to her and over her.

"No. No. I haven't touched her. She's tried, but I don't want her. You. I want you, just you. That dream. I saw you in your bed. You sat up and you were half-naked. Your nightdress was slipping off your shoulders. I could see you through the cloth, almost but not quite, your stomach, your thighs, your breasts." He brushed his hands across her body, naming each part as he touched it and set it on fire." I kept trying to come towards you. I wanted to touch you, to hold you, but I couldn't get any closer, so I said your name. You reached for me and then you disappeared and I woke up, but this is how I wanted to be. Here, with you, feeling this, feeling you, Weasley."

_Weasley!_ Hearing her last name on his lips broke through the fire of sensual stimulation, and Ginny struggled to sit up. "Wait. Malfoy, just wait a second—"

But he wasn't giving her any time at all; she felt his big hands lift up her lower back, pulling her to him, and her blouse had somehow come undone again and oh gods his mouth was starting to move over the thin lace material of her bra. "Mm, mm, oh, these breasts of yours!" he murmured. "How I've missed them. Off, Let me take this off you, Weasley. I need to. You'll love it. Now, off, hurry!"

The bond sang and rejoiced. But she still hesitated.

Draco's knuckles were white. "What are you waiting for?" he asked raggedly. "Listen to me. Here's what I'm going to do." He trailed a hand between her breasts. Then, very very slowly, and in exquisite detail, he told her about every one of his plans. "Let me, Weasley," he said when he had quite done. "Let me do those things for you."

The bond screamed. It wanted everything that he had just described as desperately as it was possible to want anything. And so did she. But the difference was that the bond heard only what Draco had said, about sex and desire and physical need. The sane part of Ginny heard everything that he hadn't said. _Not even my first name,_ she thought sadly.

She held him off with one hand, feeling as if she had no strength at all. He stiffened and gave a stifled groan, but pulled back instantly.

"But nothing's changed, has it?" she said. "Not really."

_He knows what I mean,_ she thought at the look on his face. _He's not even going to pretend he doesn't._

Draco finally sat back on his heels, rubbing his face. He looked at her with a calmer expression. "Oh, yes it has. There's one new thing that's come from your own lips now, Weasley. You've said that you've got to know that you'd be able to come to me in Azkaban."

"Argh!" She covered her face. "Yes. I have to. I think I'll die if I don't."

"I don't know if there's anything to your vision, or if it's only some sort of illusion. But I think you already know, Weasley, that there's only one way to be sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that you could do what you're determined to do." He waited. When she didn't speak, he went on.

"You have no choice but to renew the bond now. Here, where it's safe to do so. The Crystal Palace is magically protected in every way possible."

_He won't pressure me,_ Ginny realized. He was telling the truth, plain and clear, just as all sarcasm and affectation had temporarily left his speech. _Well, then I'll do the same for him._

"My terms haven't changed, Malfoy," she said. "No sex without love. You don't love me. You know you don't. So I just can't have sex with you."

"I know. I understand." Draco moved back towards her.

She would not allow herself to feel anything, any emotion at all, simply because of the fact that he hadn't contradicted her. "But what about what happened after you originally offered me…" She tried to grasp at the memory of exactly what he'd once offered her. He was sitting so much closer now that it was becoming difficult again. "Get back over there, Malfoy! On Vendetta Island… uh…"

"I don't want to distract you," Draco said thoughtfully. "I want you to make a clear decision, but it's very difficult to stay more than a few inches away from you just now… All right. I believe that you need to understand this, Weasley, so we're going to go through it from beginning to end. Try to think as clearly as you can. I'll remind you. I'll make you understand it now… you'll see everything now…" His voice drifted off. "When you're very close, I have a great deal of trouble in thinking clearly too." He sounded surprised.

Ginny's mouth curved in a secret smile. She hadn't meant to inch closer to Draco, but the opportunity was too good to resist.

"You… I'd just finished giving you pleasure," he said, a little unsteadily. "You'd done the same for me, but my recovery time is so short, I wanted you again, of course. I could feel how ready you were. Do you remember that?"

"Yes," said Ginny, and she certainly did.

"I knew that you'd be preparing to leave me soon, or that you wanted to. But you didn't need to leave at all. You can't know how much I wanted to follow through, Weasley, and you cannot imagine what a night it would have been for you if you'd let me do it. Instead, you stopped me. You left me, and you went back to your bed, alone. Didn't your body crave mine? Didn't you feel the agony of starvation, of incompletion?"

"I—oh, okay! Yes," she said ungraciously, because the agony was building up again just from hearing him talking about it now.

"So you refused me, and you left. And I let you go. That's the point. I didn't force you, or even try to convince you further."

"Fine. So you didn't. But then you know what happened the next day. You sent me the letter of credit with the standard Malfoy offer to become a Malfoy mistress! That's just what you would've expected me to become."

"Yes," he said calmly. "I would have done."

"Oh, so you do finally admit it. At least you're being honest about why you sent that insulting letter."

"No, no, Weasley, no. You don't understand." He nuzzled at her ear, and she felt her objections melting into a puddle and trying to drain away. Grimly, she scooped them up.

"It had better be a good fucking explanation, Malfoy."

"It is. It will be. I'll explain it now, and you could at least listen, couldn't you? I want very much for you to know what I was thinking. I didn't mean to insult you, and you'll never understand this unless I explain it. That wouldn't do any harm, would it?"

"I suppose not," she said grudgingly, scooting back from him.

"So for just the next few minutes, Weasley, listen to me lay out the stream of thoughts I had at the start of June before I sent that letter." Draco took a deep breath, and then began to speak slowly and deliberately, as if quoting.

"'There's no shame in being a Malfoy mistress. They've always been the most elegant, refined, intelligent witches in the world. That position is one of honor and respect. And you have no idea, none, of the pleasure they gain from that position."

"I'm sure it's a nice career option for—" Ginny stopped. She wouldn't use the word _whores_ around him again, although that was the first one that had come to mind. "Women who already have a lot of experience."

"That's true. They're always women of great experience, and there's never been one who began when she was nearly as innocent as you are now. I've researched their history in one of the Malfoy libraries, and none of them came close to you, not even those who were at least as young when they started… so I want you to understand my thinking here…"

"What _sort_ of thinking?"

"The incredible care I would put into planning out this part of it, tailoring every bit to you and only you." He brushed the hair from her ear and began whispering into it. "I told you a secret about me on Vendetta Island, Weasley. I've never taken a girl's virginity before, and I've never really wanted to. But you… oh, you're different. I would take great pleasure in corrupting your innocence. Slowly. Deliberately. In every detail. You do remember when I've said that before, correct?"

"Malfoy! I'm not going to—"

"Shh. No promises. No obligations." He stroked her shoulder lightly, and she shivered. "Give in to the fantasy, Weasley, and imagine what might happen between us. That's all I'm asking you to do. Will you try?"

A strange image filled her mind. She stood on solid ground, looking into a forest. Draco stood on the very edge, dressed in a crown of daisies, and he beckoned to her. If she followed him, he would lead her further and further into a dark world of sensual enchantment. She didn't know if she was more aroused or afraid, but he didn't come after her or try to coax her in; he just stood there, and he waited for her to make her own decision.

"I'll make a deal with you, Weasley," said Draco. "For the next few minutes, allow me to lead you through a few fantasies about the things that might happen between us. A moment will come when I've taken you far enough. We'll both know when it has. That's the point when you'll choose what you're going to do with me. Yes, or no?" He sat back slightly, waiting for her to decide.

"What will you do if I say no, Malfoy?" she asked.

"Then I'll let you go. You can sit on the other side of this room on the floor for the next hour, if you like."

Ginny looked at him, considering. _Yes. I believe that he really would do._ "I'll stay," she said. "For now, anyway. But I'm not promising anything, Malfoy."

Draco shuddered minutely all along his body, and his breathing quickened. "Close your eyes," he whispered. "Lie back."

She let him ease her down to the bed, her heart pounding, feeling strangely weightless. He rolled towards her, his hands skimming lightly over her breasts and hips and thighs. "Is that all right?" he asked.

He had to know it was, she thought. She'd given a violent little jerk with each touch. "Y—yes."

"Especially your breasts. Tell me if I'm allowed to touch your breasts, Weasley."

"Yes." She bit her lip. "As much as you like," she added in a rush. Maybe it wasn't at all wise to add that last sentence, but she couldn't _bear_ not to.

"Ah." Draco let out his breath in a hiss. "I won't touch you further until you give me your permission, then. Are you ready to hear a few fantasies? Only a very few, of course?"

"Yes," she whispered.

He pressed even closer to her. "You cannot imagine the things I would teach you. Sensual things. Secret things. I do love to lay elaborate plans, Weasley. But they're not always evil ones. Imagine planning out a long stretch of time—perhaps a luscious week—devoted simply to your sexual initiation. All of that time spent on you, drawing out all the exquisite details, concentrating only on your pleasure, preparing you in every way I can think of to make you ready and eager to receive me, Weasley. Would you like that?"

His words were dark and dirty and shameful, forcing her closer and closer to some unbearable carnal pleasure. "Yes."

"That would only be the start. I love the thought of mastering you, and training you to please me properly. Would you like to learn all the secret ways to please me? You can't begin to imagine what they are now."

Ginny knew that she should be shocked at what Draco was saying. Appalled. Horrified… "Yes."

"Good," he whispered. "Because when you give me pleasure, Weasley, I'll become your slave."

His words sent a dark, pitch-hot wave of weakness smashing over her. "But…" She struggled to think. There was something real here, something that wasn't just fantasy, and she had to get it clear. "Malfoy, I remember what you wrote about all of this in that note you sent me with the letter of credit."

"Yes." He idly brushed his hand against the bottom curve of her left breast. "And? Do speak up. Are you having trouble talking?"

"Ooh… you… you only said it was a good idea in the first half. In the second half, you told me to not to wait for you. You told me to stay away from you, because you had nothing to offer me."

"Oh, I remember that." His hand kept moving. "I was thick, wasn't I? A bloody fool. I don't know why I didn't just tear up that note and write another."

"But—" She began to squirm uncontrollably.

"I didn't mean a word of it." His other hand was stealing round the curve of her other breast.

"Then why did you _write_- ooh!"

"Do you want something, Weasley?"

"You're cruel," she said.

"Never," he whispered in her ear. "I'm a terrible tease, that's all. But I always follow through. If you like."

"I- I just couldn't- " she said. _Oh, who cares what you think you couldn't do!_ her body screeched at her.

"I'm not asking you to," said Draco. He looked at her with serious grey eyes. "Weasley, take a deep breath. I wouldn't allow you to follow through at this moment if you begged me. Just imagine. Just fantasize. And in that fantasy, would you be so very sure that you'd need to be in soppy, fatuous first love in order to experience what I could offer you?"

"Think about it, Weasley." His voice was tender in her ear. His hands were like feathers on her breasts, and the feeling was so acute that Ginny couldn't even tell whether it trembled on the edge of pain or pleasure. "You thought you loved Harry Potter. I suppose that Dean Thomas thinks he loves you. Even your youngest brother thought he loved the bushy-haired Granger, and you certainly remember how well _that_ little affair turned out. Weasley, how would you know that the emotion were even real? How could you be sure it was anything more than a confused infatuation? Now, think of this. You're desperate, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"You feel as if you're starving. You crave something you don't even fully understand. It's painful, physically painful, to do without it."

"Yes."

"I understand what it is. I can give it to you. More pleasure than you can even imagine. Now, what do you want your first time to be? Quick and awkward and painful, with some selfish boy who couldn't care less about you, but you've convinced yourself that you're in love with him? Do you want to throw away your innocence that way, Weasley? Or do you want all the time in the world devoted only to you, total fulfillment, complete satisfaction, unimaginable pleasure at the hands of an expert? That would be me, Weasley. That's what it's like to be a Malfoy mistress. It's a whole new world to explore, because as I told you, no Malfoy mistress has ever begun as a virgin. Every bit of the exquisite luxury and perfection and refinement lavished on every other facet of the art would be turned on your initiation. It would be unimaginable. It would be everything that you could ever want. Everything that's real, not only an illusion. What do you say? Are you going to keep insisting that you need to be 'in love,' as you put it, for your first time?"

"I— I don't know anymore." Her surety was coming undone. Her head was spinning, every nerve in her body seemed to be throbbing, the very room was thrumming under her, but… but she still had a sane core of self, and that self still stood apart from what he was so expertly doing to her body. "But whether I do or not, I can't let it happen this way."

She sat up, ignoring the whimpering of every nerve ending. "That's the real problem, and you know it. I feel like I've gone mad. Perhaps it isn't even about being in love or not being in love, but if I _do_ this, if I give in to what you want—and yes, all right, it's what I want too! " She made a helpless gesture with her hand. "I'll regret it more than I can even say. Once I'm sane again, I mean, and I will be."

"So you don't want me at all?" asked Draco.

"Fuck," she muttered.

"Yes, that's the idea—"

"Shut up. Damn it!"

"Pleasure. Perfect pleasure. It could be yours."

"Malfoy—"

"All right," he said, pulling back from her, his face suddenly sober. "I suppose that the point's really come after all. It's time to decide how much of me you actually want, Weasley. But think of this as you make your decision," Draco said flatly. "I'm gifted with astounding sexual talents, and don't hit me again; you know that it's true. I'll turn every bit of that expertise on you, and we're connected through this sensual bond. _Imagine_ the sort of pleasure you'd feel. No. You can't, can you?"

"I probably can't," Ginny admitted.

"So what do you want from me, Weasley? The choice is yours."

"Malfoy, if nothing else, you told me that doing this could be dangerous," she said. "You said it so many bloody times back in May that I wanted to strangle you by the end of the night."

Draco nodded. "But I told you not fifteen minutes ago that nothing you do with me could carry any danger here. I wouldn't put you at risk that way, Weasley."

_Weasley. There it is again. _Ginny let her forehead fall into her hand, feeling how hot it was. She could feel the warmth of his body behind her, too, and she wondered if he would push his advantage and sit so close to her that she'd lose all control and all ability to say no to him. But he didn't. The bed creaked.

She stole a glance back at him. He was sitting close to the edge, looking at the wall, rubbing his face. A glow from an orange witchlight lit him just so when he moved, and she saw how thin he'd become since she'd seen him last. Desire and need, exasperation and suspicion, and finally, frighteningly, a tenderness that she knew she would not admit; they all mingled and crested and surged in a wave that hit Ginny and rolled over her and left her breathless, and she knew what she would do at last. She thought that she'd probably known from the moment she first saw Draco standing at the hidden door in the tunnels of St. Mungo's.

"I've decided," she said, tapping him on the shoulder. He turned.

"And?"

Ginny sighed. "I… Malfoy, I can't _fight_ this anymore, it's like trying to haul a thousand tons of weight, but I still won't, I just _can't_-"

"Shh, shh, shh," said Draco. His arms had gone round her somehow, and he was stroking her back, kissing her neck and half-bared shoulders.

"For some absolutely mad reason, I've got to be able to get into Azkaban to care for you if you ever do really end up there. And we've got this bloody annoying bond! That's probably why. And—ergh—all right, I want you desperately. But- " Ginny tried to cover her eyes with her hands. Draco took them down.

"I know. I understand, Weasley. The wait's almost over… but only if you tell me exactly what you want. " His hands started to make little circles on her back.

"How could you understand when I haven't even explained anything yet?"

He gave her that dizzying smile. "Really, Weasley, do you _seriously_ believe that I don't understand what you want? But you won't get a thing unless you ask, you know."

She hesitated. She could _still_ keep her mouth shut, although her entire body was threatening to revolt and stage a takeover of her brain. _Ginny!_ her cerebrum groaned. _You're headed directly for the seventh circle of hell if you say this to Draco Malfoy. You'll be tormented by demons and prodded by imps. You'll suffer all the hideous tortures of the damned! Oh, and Loki will probably be there, saying he told you so. Do you really want to go through that for the rest of all eternity?_

That possibility was enough to even give her starving, screaming body pause as she sat seconds away from the food it craved most. But not for long. _Shut up,_ it snarled at her. _I'm suffering them now! And you can't tell me that you're not, either. Are you really telling me that you don't want to jump his bones?_

_They are rather gorgeous bones, aren't they?_ her brain observed. _On a strictly objective level, of course. Also, we never did find the chocolate. We have to keep the search going. All right. Let's get together on this thing._

"That's it. I give up!" Ginny grabbed at Draco's shoulders. "I have to have sex, I have to have it with you, and I think I'll die if I don't get it, right this second! Uh… limited sex, that is. We just can't actually… well, you know."

"Your wish is my command. Your clothes will be off before much longer, and so will mine, and you'll feel all those sumptuous things you remember so well." He kissed the tip of her nose, softly. "Now, what would you like?"

"What?" asked Ginny, confused.

"Exactly what variety of sexual satisfaction?"

"I—uh—I don't know. I mean, if we can't have actual, complete sex… won't we just do what we did before?"

"Oh, no. We can go further, you know. If you agree to it."

_Further!_ The room blurred before Ginny's eyes.

Draco stroked her shoulders. "Do you trust me?" he asked. "Answer me, Weasley."

Ginny struggled to think. This was important, she somehow knew. "I've always been able to trust you so far, when it comes to this sort of thing," she said slowly. _And if I don't, then there's no point in doing this at all._ "You promise me no actual sex?"

"On a stack of Necronomicons," said Draco. "But I need a promise from you in return."

"I suppose you want me to promise to give you pleasure as well." Ginny blushed. She couldn't help remembering the last time she'd done that, although everything had been so confused and dreamlike that she wasn't sure if it the memory seemed real at all.

"Oh, I don't have any doubts about your ability to do that." He kissed her neck where it met her collarbone. "No, I'm talking about a very different sort of promise. Although that blush of yours does have something to do with exactly what it is… Weasley, you said that you trusted me, but it's got to mean more than just words on your part. You've got to trust me truly if you're going to give over control for the next few hours. You have to believe that you don't need to fight me, because there's no other way for you to stop fighting yourself."

"I'm not fighting myself," Ginny said quickly.

"Oh, aren't you?" Draco moved down to the top of the valley between her breasts. "I can feel you tense, Weasley. But you've already told me that I can touch you exactly as I like here. So you're not struggling against me, are you? Answer me honestly. Wouldn't it be a relief if you did? You can be honest, you know. Here, now, in this room, you don't need to lie about these things."

"No, I'm not fighting you at all, Malfoy," said Ginny. It really was a relief to admit it, she thought with surprise.

"Now imagine if you stopped fighting your own reactions to me. Allow yourself to feel your response to me. Think about how good that would feel, Weasley. Picture simply letting yourself go."

Ginny did picture it. The picture frightened her.

"Are you afraid to try?" His voice wasn't mocking now; it sounded genuinely thoughtful.

"Awfully afraid," she admitted.

"But are you _willing_ to try?" He stroked the very top of her breasts. "Let's try an experiment. You told me that you needed sex, Weasley. You told me that you thought you'd die if you didn't get it. This is the only way for you to feel the sort of deep pleasure that you should. Total release. Complete satisfaction. Let it happen."

His touch was sinfully wonderful on her skin, and Ginny suddenly realized that she was still tensing herself against him, trying to block him out in some way. _What if I really did just let myself go?_ she thought.

"I'm afraid," she whispered.

"Fear sharpens pleasure," said Draco. "Do it, Weasley. Let it fall. Drop the rope."

"But what would that mean?"

He lifted his head. "At the end of the next few hours, Weasley—no, scratch that. At the end of the night, you'll still be a virgin. I swear that you will. You've said that you trust me to hold to that promise. Then what you've got to do in return, _all_ you've got to do, is to be utterly honest with both me and yourself about what you really want. Will you do that?"

"Yes."

"I mean what I say. Your every desire, Weasley. Every wish you've ever had. Every desire you've ever been ashamed to admit. Every need you've ever fought. Think about it." He reached forward, fingering a strand of her hair. "Remember every time you've desperately wanted to succumb to a boy, or a man, and you've fought your own urges tooth and nail instead? You can't tell me there haven't been quite a number of times like that."

Ginny very clearly remembered all the time she'd spent in her teenaged years in trying to hold off aroused boys on dates. She wondered now just how much of that time had really been spent in trying to defeat herself. She remembered the things that Draco didn't know about, too, and the things that she prayed he would never, could never learn. She thought of the shade of Lucius Malfoy standing over her bound body in the Chamber of Secrets. She wondered if the son of the man who had terrorized her for so long just might be offering her a strange sort of deliverance from her fears. What a strange thought that was.

"It takes great strength to surrender your fears, Weasley," said Draco. "Will you?"

Very slowly, she nodded. "I will."

Ginny didn't know what to expect next. She had a perfectly cowardly trembly moment when she waited for some kind of terrifyingly delicious attack, and then she opened her eyes to find that she was lying on her side next to Draco in the bed and that nothing had apparently happened to her yet. He ran his hand lightly up and down the curve of her waist and hips. "How do you feel?" he asked softly.

"Strange," Ginny admitted. "Sort of…weightless. I almost think I could float."

"Good." He kissed the curve of her shoulder. "That means that you're beginning to let go. Don't worry. I'll anchor you to earth."


	48. A Deeper Slide

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: ijustsailedaway, Queen of Night, and Victoria Kathleen Wright. I hope everyone likes this chapter! This is very much the R-rated version. A lot was cut out, let's just say. But I think that the basic ideas still came across… ;)

We always long for the forbidden things, and desire what is denied us.

- _Francois Rabelais_

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"So…" Ginny struggled to put her thoughts into some kind of order. They were swirling round and round in big lazy loops. It was an oddly pleasant feeling. "What's going to happen now? I mean, how do we start?"

"I'll guide you through. Don't worry about that." Draco's kisses moved down to her arm. "It sounds as if you'd like a definite sort of beginning, though?"

"I think I would," said Ginny. "But I'm not even sure what that would mean."

"I've got an idea," said Draco. He scanned the entire room, and Ginny wondered what on earth he was thinking. He looked back at her and smiled. "Remember when I told you the truth about this room earlier? What was it?"

"Something about pleasure being refined to a very high art here." Ginny tried to remember exactly what he'd said to her.

"Very good," said Draco. "You deserve a reward for remembering so well."

_A reward._ Ginny shivered at the thought.

"You'll receive it later. Not just yet. It'll be all the better for a little waiting. Back to this room, though. You said that it probably caused desire in anyone who entered it, and you were correct. Up until now, you've been fighting its effects. That's the very first fight I'd like you to let go of. Succumb to the power here instead of struggling against it."

She hesitated.

"Try. Just try."

"What'll happen if I do?"

Draco smiled at her. The sight sent a dizzying rush of blood downwards from her head. She'd forgotten how sinfully beautiful that smile was. "Wouldn't you like to find out?"

_Wouldn't I?_ she wondered.

"Remember your promise," he said. "And remember mine." The perfection of his smile seemed to invite her to walk a wand's edge of pleasure up to a cliff, to jump off, to soar… Ginny shivered again.

"Are you cold?" he asked.

"No. I, uh… I _do_ want to find out," she said in a rush. "But—"

"But it's wrong? But it's not what good little Gryffindor girls do?" The smile caressed her. "But you can't have your white wedding if you've let yourself be seduced by a room in the Crystal Palace?"

"Yes. No. I don't know…"

"Do you trust me to keep my promise? Ah… yes. You do, don't you?"

Ginny closed her eyes. She did. Yes, she did. "All right," she said quickly, before she lost her nerve. "Show me."

Draco moved all the way to the end of the bed.

"Why aren't you touching me?"she asked.

"You'll see. Just lie there for a few moments. Think about Quidditch or something."

Ginny stared up at the ceiling, letting her mind wander. When Draco spoke again, she jumped.

"I'd like you to pretend for just a moment that you've walked in here on your own," he said. "You've been fighting this room from the moment you came through the door, so I think that if you're able to stop now, this should copy the effects more or less exactly. Let go, and you ought to start to experience exactly what this room can do. But pretend I'm not here yet, if you can. Just feel it in your body. Take a deep breath. In, and out. Now another."

Ginny filled her lungs with air and then blew her breath out slowly, again and again. It was oddly relaxing. There was a subtle, delicious scent in the room, not only chocolate, but also… _mmm… spicy and herbal… eucalyptus, maybe?_ Her breath went in, and out. She shifted position. Her skin was growing warmer and warmer. The heat spread up her entire body.

Draco had slipped next to her. "Do you feel it now?"

"I—yes!" gasped Ginny. "I don't understand how I didn't before."

"I suppose I should've allowed the process to go on longer," he said. "But I couldn't. Watching you…" He broke off.

"Did you feel it as well? The effects of—oh—uh- this room, I mean?" Ginny was finding it very difficult to talk.

"I—it isn't necessary for me. The room is carefully designed for women, to prepare the female body for sexual fulfillment. Male arousal is more primal, of course, more easily stirred up, so that quality doesn't really need to be heightened."

"So, you mean that if a girl has sex in this room—" Ginny couldn't quite finish the sentence. Some small part of her was standing aghast at the very fact that she had started it. The rest of her was walking deeper and deeper into the dark forest, Draco leading her by the hand.

"Her pleasure is refined to an exquisite edge," Draco said softly.

"Do all of the rooms actually do this?"

Draco paused. "No. They don't; not exactly. This room… is special."

Her fingertips were tingling. "Tell me more."

He smiled faintly, but even the shadow of that smile made Ginny's head spin. Or maybe the _room_ was starting to spin round and round…

"You remind me of the girl in the fairy tale who wanted to open the golden door to see what lay behind it," said Draco. "Are you brave enough to find out?"

He had to know that this would be like a red flag to a bull, thought Ginny. "Of course I am."

"Well, we can stop at any time. I'd like to tell you a story about what might happen to you in this room, if I may. Although it's more of a fantasy than a story. I'd like to serve your Scheherazade, only for one night instead of a thousand and one. Will you let me guide you through it, Weasley?"

"You've got to call me something else," blurted Ginny. "If we're going to do this. You can't call me by my last name. It won't work."

There was a pause. "I suppose you're right. Last names aren't very sensual, are they? If I promise to call you by some other name than 'Weasley', will you take me as your guide?"

"Yes," she said.

"Ah. Then let's begin. First, you'll need to do exactly as I say…" He bent down and whispered in her ear. "Sweetheart."

_Sweetheart. The word can't mean anything, of course. It can't! Not from him_, thought Ginny. When she sneaked a peek up at him, he was smiling at her, that lazy smile that promised a world of unimaginable delight, and that was all. But "sweetheart" had a soft and sensual sound on his lips, so much better than just "Weasley." She knew that whenever she heard him say it to her for the rest of the night, it definitely wouldn't pull her out of this dream. _Good enough. Yes. For tonight, it's good enough._

"Will you trust me to lead you through this fantasy?" he asked her.

"I will," she said.

"Good. Remember, you'll need to put your complete trust in me." Draco opened the drawer of the small bedside table and pulled out a length of black fabric. Ginny had no idea what it was until he reached around her head and tied it in back.

"It's a blindfold," she whispered. "But, uh, I can see through it."

"Yes. They're standard in all the rooms, and they're enchanted so that the material will turn opaque in ten minutes. Approximately twenty minutes after that point, the blindfold will disappear entirely."

"But—why? What happens now?"

Draco held up two wisps of black lace and satin from the same drawer. A sleeveless teddy embroidered with little rosebuds; it would end at about her hips. A pair of black lace knickers. They were a very, _very_ expensive set of lingerie, Ginny realized. "I'm going to leave the room," he said. "You'll put these on, lie down, and wait for me to return." He got up from the bed.

"Wait! Uh… what are we doing?"

"You don't need to know that yet," said Draco. But the best way to think of it is this, sweet. It's as if you're a new girl who's been brought into the Crystal Palace and left here to wait for her first man. That's the frame of mind I'd like you to be in when I walk back into this room."

Ginny sat on the bed and stared at the lingerie for at least a full minute after Draco had left the room and gone into the bathroom on one side. _Oh gods. Oh gods. Oh.. oh…I'd better hurry up. I've only got nine minutes left!_ She took off her blouse and trousers with trembling hands, and then her bra and plain white knickers. The lingerie was like cobwebs, so fine that she was afraid she'd tear the material by just putting it on. She slipped the teddy over her head

_He wants me to imagine I'm a new girl, waiting here for a customer. My very first one. A girl at the Crystal Palace would have to do anything a man wanted, I suppose. I'd have to please him in any way he asked…_

Her skin tingled as the silk rubbed against her shoulders and breasts. She began to pull the silk knickers over her hips.

_How could I please him when I don't know even what to do? I don't know anything, I've never done anything… except what I've done with Draco. Draco… I can think of him that way, but I don't see how I can possibly call him by his first name. Not unless he does the same thing for me. Anyway, I suppose that he'll be playing the part of the customer, in this game._

She pulled the knickers up all the way, and she lay down quickly on the bed. The blindfold was growing dark, and then it blocked out her entire field of vision.

_I won't even be able to see him when he comes in._

The bathroom door creaked open. She heard his footsteps pad into the room. They stopped by the bed. There was a long pause.

"How pretty you are, sweetheart," said Draco. "Here—stand so that I can look at you."

A strong hand grasped hers and raised her to her feet.

"Ah." He let out his breath in a hiss. "Beautiful. Perfect."

Surely he had to touch her now, and she expected to feel his hands all over her at any moment. But he didn't touch her. There was a very long pause.

"Reach up and take the camisole off. Then the knickers."

"Why'd I put them on in the first place, then?"

"Just do it." His voice held an implacable edge.

She obeyed him.

"Now lie facedown on the bed," said Draco's disembodied voice. He guided her there, and she felt that he'd pushed back the coverlet so that she was lying on silk sheets. She shifted position restlessly.

"How do you feel, sweetheart?"

"I—my body feels very sensitive."

"You're continuing to respond to this room," said Draco. "I've been examining you closely, although you can't see it, of course. When you were standing in front of me, you wanted me to touch you, didn't you?"

"Yes… why didn't you?"

"Ah, sweetheart, I'm your man for the night, remember?"

"Yes," she said. "I'm supposed to do what you want, right?"

"Right. And I want you to understand something. I'm going to touch you. I'm going to stimulate you. I'm going to tell you stories and lead you through fantasies. But I don't want you to have any illusions. I don't want you to somehow harbor the belief that anything we do or say is innocent, because what happens at the Crystal Palace is never innocent." His voice was very harsh. Ginny wondered why. "Never… innocence can't survive here…. But that doesn't matter now. What we do will dig into your deepest desires, the ones you've always considered to be shameful. Dirty. Unspeakable. So now I'm going to say what I would really say, ask what I would really ask, if I'd entered the room, and I saw that you were the girl who were waiting for me. You've got to know what this question is, and you've got to know your reaction to it. I would say… you're beautiful. Oh, so beautiful. I want you. You're going to be mine. I want you to be ready for me. So…" He paused deliberately, and then he asked her the question.

A tremor of real fear ran all through her as she heard his words. "But, but we can't. I told you that we can't actually, and you said—"

"And we won't. We won't actually do it. You have my word, my wizard's vow, that we won't follow through all the way. But if you're not willing to prepare for it, then you'll never surrender to the pleasure you could feel tonight. "Say the words, sweetheart." He laid a hand on her upper back. It was a place where he could have touched her in public with a roomful of people watching, but every nerve she had seemed to be connected to it. "Go on," he said.

"Yes." She spoke quickly. It was the only way to get the impossible words out. "Please. Do it. I want you to…"

"Say the words."

_I've gone mad,_ thought Ginny.

"Say them." His voice was gentle but inexorable.

"Prepare me," blurted Ginny. "For you. For tonight. For—for anything, with you. For whatever you want to do to me." Her face felt hot enough to set the sheets on fire. She hadn't repeated exactly what he had said to her, but she hoped she had come close enough; she certainly couldn't say any more.

"Good. Very, very good," he complimented her. "I'm perfectly aware of how difficult that was for you. But it wasn't so bad, was it?"

"No," said Ginny, feeling faintly surprised. "It wasn't."

"To continue. I might have come in after you'd been here for an hour or two on your own, opening yourself to the magic here. If we had enough time, I could simply lie here and watch you move through all the stages of arousal. I wouldn't even need to lay a finger on you. But to tell you the truth, I couldn't stand that. I've got to touch you, sweetheart.I can see you like that idea. Then you'll like what happens next. But you've got to trust me, remember?"

"I remember."

Draco leaned down to her and kissed the side of her neck. "You're so very beautiful. I'd forgotten how perfect your body is. But now it's laid out on this bed in front of me and I can see everything… do you know what I've brought back with me from that very luxurious bathroom?"

"I have no idea. How could I know?"

She felt his arm move up around the side of her neck. He held something up to her nose. A glass bottle. She sniffed. _Roses._ "Some kind of perfume? No, it doesn't smell strong enough for that."

"It's a very lightly scented oil. May I use it on you?"

A number of possible uses rushed through Ginny's mind. "Um—what for?"

He chuckled. "A massage."

"Oh. Of course."

She heard the bed creak as Draco sat on the side of it. _He must be sitting above me. What's that… I think he's rubbing his hands together… mmmm. Oh, that's good…_ He was massaging her back in smooth, long strokes, one after the other.

"Do you like that, sweet?"

"Yes… mm, mm… where did you learn to do this?"

"That's not important now." The bed creaked again, and she felt him move above her, holding his weight over her, moving down, stroking deeper. The feeling was heavenly. She gave herself up to it.

"Mmm," said Draco. "What a pretty kitten you are." His hands moved along her legs, the steady effleurage strokes dipping lower and lower. "Let me hear you purr."

Ginny sighed and made a meowing sort of noise, low in her throat. She was floating in a sea of delightful sensations; his slippery hands were everywhere and she thought, really, that she'd do just about anything he asked her to do, as long as he didn't stop that wonderful massage.

"Very, very good, said Draco, kissing her neck lightly. His hands kept moving, moving, strong and sure, massaging her thighs, her legs, her fan-shaped lower back, her shoulders, until Ginny finally relaxed just the tiniest bit. The silk sheets were still chafing her skin unbearably.

"Your body should be moving towards an advanced stage of arousal by now," he said, stroking her sides, just brushing her breasts. "Imagine if you were still stubbornly trapped in tiresomely fighting your feelings. You'd be screeching no, I suppose. And now, just think of the relief. You can admit to yourself that you do feel desire…"

"Yes," sighed Ginny. Gods, but what an incredible relief it was just to give up that fight!

"Arch your back up, sweetheart," he said. She did, luxuriously, like a cat. Oh, what a wonderful feeling it was!

"Prop yourself up on your elbows." He reached down and massaged her with his oiled hands. "Are you ready?" he whispered in her ear.

Every inch of her body was tingling. "Yes," she said.

"I can feel that you are," said Draco. "Arousal happens quickly here no matter what, but you're so, so ready, sweetheart, aren't you? I've made you that way. More than ready. Or you would be, if you were already an experienced woman. You see, this is how you would be prepared for a customer, pet. For any customer. For any man to come into this room and enjoy your body in any way he liked, knowing that you would feel pleasure, as well."

Ginny shivered. The thought was dark and even sinfully arousing in a way, but disturbing too. She didn't _want_ just any customer, after all.

"But I would never let anyone else touch you," said Draco, his voice suddenly harsh." Never. Nobody else plays with my toys."

"I'm not your toy, Malfoy—ooh!"

"Of course you're not. It's part of the game, that's all. That's all right, isn't it?"

"Mm-hm…" It _had_ to be all right.

"Do you want something, sweet?" Draco whispered to her.

_Oh, no. No! I actually seriously thought about having actual sex with Draco Malfoy!_ Ginny thought in a brief moment of clarity. _And that's the best reason in the world not to ask him to go any further._

Draco reached for her shoulder and flipped her over, roughly. He sat back and looked her flushed body up and down. The blindfold had disappeared by now. She could finally really see him, and he clearly wasn't anywhere near as self-controlled as he'd sounded from his voice. It gave her a secret thrill.

He kept looking her over with an expert eye, as dispassionately as a horse trader examining a thoroughbred filly, thought Ginny. The image filled her with an absolutely dirty thrill, because she knew, simply knew, that Draco was _trying_ to keep to that sort of thing, but not quite succeeding. She would have bet all the galleons in the Malfoy vault in Gringotts on that, if she could have gotten her hands on them.

"Nicely prepared," he said, and his voice was almost, but not quite, under his control. "You're ready all right, sweetheart. I love knowing that you're mine, and that nobody else can touch you. Nobody else has that privilege, do they?"

"No. Of course not. Oh!" She'd definitely heard a cracking noise. "What was that?"

"Nothing," said Draco. "It was nothing."

She flicked her glance down at the floor. Something was lying in little broken pieces all over the carpet. The wooden stopper to the bottle of oil had disappeared. The knuckles of Draco's right hand were very white.

A sense of power stole over Ginny steadily, bit by bit. "If you're the only one who can touch me," she said, "then how long am I going to have to wait for you to start doing it again?"

She watched his reaction carefully. One of his eyelids went into an uncontrollable spasm. His jaw tightened. "How greedy you are, sweetheart," he said unevenly.

"Wouldn't I be, though?" she asked daringly. "If I were your girl for the night?"

Draco leaned down and let his fingers trail along her thighs. They were still slippery with the rose-scented oil. "What a dangerous game you're playing, pet."

"I think I like games," said Ginny.

"Do you?" Draco asked raggedly. "Do you know what would happen then, sweetheart? If you were actually a girl taking me on at the Crystal Palace? If I really were your man for the night?"

Darkness. He was leading her deeper and deeper into darkness, and she was following him. She could feel the heat of the heart of darkness rising around her. "You've been preparing me," she said. "So now, we'd… I'd be...I can't say it. You've got to tell me."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I have to know." She teetered at the edge of an abyss, looking downward.

He leaned over her. She could feel the heat coming off his body, even though he was still fully clothed and she was not. He whispered in her ear everything that he would do to her, and his voice was like filthy, elegant velvet. Then he pulled back.

"Would you like that?" he asked.

_Breathe. Breathe, Ginny._ She struggled for air. She was going to suffocate. He was looking down at her with his silvery devil's eyes in his fallen angel's face, and he expected some sort of answer.

_Breathe!_

Ginny sucked in a lungful of air. She hissed something at the very end of a gasp, and she thought it might have been _yes._

But Draco didn't answer her. The silence went on and on, as Ginny slowly found that she could breathe after all, and slowly floated back down to earth. The haze began to clear. She blinked.

_Oh gods. Oh gods. Oh gods. What have I – no, I couldn't have really just said, but I think I did! What have I done? I think I just told Draco Malfoy that.. that I wanted him to… and that he could… and that we… and oh fuck, about half an hour after I kept insisting that I didn't want to have actual sex with him at all, no matter what. And I'm naked. And he's practically on top of me. And, oh gods, what now…_

He turned to her suddenly. He was still kneeling between her legs, he realized, and she was naked and completely vulnerable. _Please, please don't let it end this way,_ she prayed. _Please. It was only part of the game. I didn't mean it. Not really. Not now. I'm not ready. Please._

He reached towards her. She flinched.

Draco swung off her and lay by her side. Then he touched her shoulder and rubbed her neck with the rose oil, his touch light and even, and the tension left her bit by bit.

"Nothing's going to happen," she said, astonished.

He was very quiet for a long moment; she couldn't even hear his breathing. "Did you really think that it would?"

"I—I don't know what I thought. I mean, I did say yes, or at least I _thought_ I did, I'm not even sure what I said or didn't say—"

"What did you think I was going to _do_ to you, Weas—" He broke off. "Sorry. I'm sorry." He kept smoothing one of his hands over her arm. "I knew that you weren't sure. That's why I knew that you couldn't have possibly meant it. You're not really my girl at the Crystal Palace. I'm not really your man for the night, or the week, or the month. So I knew that I—" He swallowed hard. "That I _couldn't_-"

Ginny lay very still, absorbing everything that he had said, and everything that he had left unsaid. She thought that it might take her a very long time to even begin to guess what fell into the second category. Draco's head was turned away from her. His eyes seemed to be shining more than they should.

"Do you see how safe you are with me, sweetheart?" he finally asked.

Slowly, Ginny nodded.

"I told you that I'd keep my promise, and I did." He picked up a curl of her hair and played with it on the end of his finger. "I told you a story, that's all. None of it will come true tonight."

"But there's something that I still don't understand," she said. "Even though I didn't mean that I really wanted what you were talking about, even though it scares me just to think about actually doing it now, I still said yes! It just doesn't make any sense."

"Let go of your shame, sweetheart. I guided you through a fantasy, and you responded to it beautifully. But it was only a fantasy, and nothing more. I wouldn't allow you to fulfill it tonight if you begged me." Draco kissed the curve of her neck lightly. "You're safe," he repeated. "Let go."

Ginny sighed tremendously, and something within her seemed to fall away and dissolve. "Was all of this some sort of test?" she asked.

"Only of yourself, maybe," said Draco.

She thought about that. "I think I've passed."

"Wonderfully well." His kisses moved down to the tip of her shoulder blade.

"That scenario you outlined," said Ginny. "I was wondering something specific about it…maybe you could sort of answer a question…"

Draco quirked an eyebrow. "Oh, _that _scenario? I don't know. It just came to mind at the moment. What about it?"

She stifled a perfectly awful giggle. "That, uh, it sounds a bit intense. What I mean is, I just don't see how that could work for a girl's first time. In theory, I mean. Could it?"

"Unbutton my shirt while I tell you. I've remembered the feeling of your hands on me, you see, and it's been too long since I've had it," said Draco. She wriggled round, and he guided her fingers up to the carved bone buttons. Ginny began slipping them through the buttonholes, sighing at the feel of the muscles and satiny skin under her fingers again.

"I don't think it would be a particularly good idea for any girl's first time," he went on. "And it wouldn't work out well with any man. But certainly not with me; it would be impossible with me. Mm. You can do that as much as you like. Now, the first time, between you and me… I'd have to hold back with you, sweetheart. I'd need to be so careful. But I would do that, you know. For you. Oh! Yes. Scratch me with your fingernails, just like that…"

"What are we going to do now?" whispered Ginny, running her hands across his chest.

"I've thought about that for the last several months, you know," Draco mused. One corner of his mouth curved up in a smile. "Would you like to try something new, sweetheart? Something we haven't done before?"

"You said before that's what you wanted to do. You said that we could, uh… well, that we could go…" Ginny squirmed.

"Further than we've ever gone yet." He finished her sentence. "And you know, now, that you can trust me completely. I'll take you past the old boundaries, sweetheart, but I won't push you too far. Do you trust me?"

"Yes," said Ginny, a sinfully delicious quiver running through her entire body as she wondered what on earth Draco was going to do for her now. _And maybe… just maybe, if he shows me... what I'll do for him._


	49. An Angel's Seduction

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: QueenofNight, icebabesfire, and AryaElf.

Subtle he needs must be, who could seduce angels.  
- _John Milton_

+

I'm really very proud of my achievements with this chapter. It's a LOT shorter than the original NC-17 version posted on FIA—it lost eight full pages- but I really think that it still works. I will warn everybody that it is still very much an R. Enjoy!

"You mentioned giving me a taste of yourself earlier, remember? Well, sweetheart…" Draco paused deliberately. "I think I'm going to take you up on that offer now."

_A taste. What does he mean? _wondered Ginny. An idea was teasing at the back of her mind. It seemed that she _ought_ to know what he was talking about. She was sure she could think of it, if only her head weren't whirling round and round the way it was now, although it was a very pleasant feeling. _Something those slutty Slytherin girls were whispering the time Natalie dared me to sneak into their common room during sixth year. Oh! And I heard Draco's name come up, about a million times._ Ginny firmly suppressed a dart of jealousy. _That was years ago,_ she reminded herself. _And anyway, whatever it was they talked about, maybe it's one of the things… tonight… he's going to… with me…_ Her mind couldn't quite put the idea together in any coherent way. It just kept circling round and round, swooping and diving, held in place only by the strength of his hands moving up her shoulders and then down round her neck.

Draco coaxed her onto her back, and she turned eagerly once she realized what he wanted her to do, a flutter of anticipation settling in the pit of her stomach. She reached up and pulled his linen shirt off, and he allowed her to do that. But when her hands went down to the waistband of his trousers, tentatively moving towards the buttons of his fly, he shook his head and closed his fingers around hers, drawing her arms back up. His hands were so large that he could hold both of hers easily in just one of his. A twinge of weakness went through Ginny when she realized that. She just couldn't stop looking at those _fingers_ of his; they were so knobbly, so large, so long, and she couldn't help remembering… well… _Is that what we're going to do? No. We did that last time, and he said we'd do something new._

"Can't I touch you?" asked Ginny.

"Not yet," he said.

"But, uh, if I only took your trousers off…" she ventured.

Draco just kept shaking his head. Ginny sneaked a quick peek downwards, and her mouth went dry at the sight of what he hadn't allowed her to touch, even _under _those trousers. But then he moved downwards, spreading her legs firmly apart and settling himself between them, his weight on her body, his head at about the level of her chest, and she really couldn't think about much of anything anymore. He just stared and stared at her, obviously looking his fill, and she felt heat rising in her face.

"I've missed… these," he finally said. "You told me that I could touch them as much as I wanted, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Ginny. She held her breath as his hands reached out for her, and then he was as good as his word. It was worth it, _all_ worth it, every bit of the teasing, she thought hazily, for this exquisite pleasure. But he certainly didn't stop teasing her.

"Please," she finally said, helplessly.

"Do you need something?"

"I have to—I think I'll _die_ if you don't—"

"If I don't what?"

"I don't know!" burst out Ginny. "Whatever it was you used to do for all those sluts in Slytherin House. Natalie McDonald dared me to sneak down there with her one time, and I couldn't quite hear what they said, but everybody knew they were doing whatever it was with _you_, and whatever it was, I want you to do it to me! Um, as long as it wasn't actually complete sex, I mean."

Draco stared at her. His mouth twitched. "Those common little slags? I shagged nearly all the Slytherin girls above fourth year at school—so did everybody else- but don't you compare yourselves with those slutty bitches, ever, ever." He leaned down so that their faces almost touched. "I'll give you a million times more than I ever gave to them," he whispered harshly. "You just wait and see, sweetheart. You'll see—you'll understand soon—" He shut his lips into a thin line.

"What do you mean?" whispered Ginny.

"Never mind."

"No." Her eyes narrowed. "What's this all about, Malfoy?"

Draco's eyes darkened. "I've already told you—never mind what it's all about. Not now." His voice was tight, and Ginny belatedly realized just what she'd said.

"I'm sorry," she said, feeling faintly ashamed. "I just don't know what else to call you except 'Malfoy'. Nothing else really seems… I mean, I don't know…" For a perfectly mad moment, she wished that he would tell her to call him by his first name. She already knew that he wouldn't do it.

Draco closed his eyes briefly. "You don't have to call me anything at all." Then he began softly stroking her face, and she forgot everything else. "You're nothing like any of the others, sweetheart. But yes, we could try one of the things that I used to do with them, as a sort of prelude. I think you'd enjoy it, although I'll warn you that it's a bit…" He raised an eyebrow at her. "Intense. Would you like to try?"

"I'm not going to back down now." said Ginny. "But this had better be—ooh!"

And, of course, being Draco Malfoy, he followed through on his promise.

"I think you know very well what I can give you," he said after a stretch of time. "Do you want it?"

Ginny could hear her own gasping, mixed with what sounded like half-sobs. She nodded.

Draco shook his head. "That's not good enough. Beg me. I want to hear the words. Don't cry, sweetheart. It's part of the game, that's all. Now go on. I want to hear you beg." His voice was gentle, even tender, but inexorable.

He had asked her to beg him last time. At the cottage. But that was _different_. Somehow. She didn't know how. _He_ was different now. Her thoughts fell past her mind like silvery ribbons of almost-pain that would turn into pleasure at any moment. "P—please," sobbed Ginny, just before Draco gave in at last, and gave her what she needed so much.

_Mmmmmm_, thought Ginny afterwards, utterly replete. For the moment, anyway. She vaguely saw that Draco was sitting up. He leaned forward and kissed her. Suddenly, the other penny dropped.

_Oh. So that's what he meant by a taste._

Ginny felt heat rising in her face when she saw that he was smiling slyly at her. He _had_ to know exactly what she was thinking. "Still blushing?" he asked.

"I can't help it," she admitted. "That was wonderful."

He traced her cheekbones and chin with a finger. "I've corrupted a bit more of that innocence of yours, sweetheart. But there's still a long, long way to go." His eyes promised a journey, she thought. _If I wanted to take one. But I just can't. I can't go all the way. So… what now?_

She shifted, brushing against him, and felt something incredibly hard. At first, she thought it was part of the bed. Then she saw Draco wince, and saw that it wasn't.

"Oh—that _has_ to hurt," she exclaimed. "It's just got to. Can't I do something for you now? Won't you let me? Where are you going?"

"Leave me alone for a minute, all right?" he asked, tilting his head back so that he stared up into the underside of the wooden canopy. "I'm trying to conjure a mental image of Colin Creevey shagging the giant squid."

"Whatever for?"

"Because there's something else I've got to show you and I want to do it next. As soon as I have the Creevey-and-squid picture firmly in mind, anyway." Draco continued to stare fixedly.

"But you've simply got to let me, um, touch you first. Don't you want to feel my hands on you?" asked Ginny, feeling very daring.

"No! Not right now. I've got to do this other thing for you first," said Draco in a high, tight voice.

Ginny looked down and saw that he had fisted the silk sheets in his hands. She looked back up, and saw that sweat had broken out on his forehead. The sense of power began to steal through her again, little by little. Power over Draco Malfoy. What an incredible thought. Could she possibly have it? Even a tiny bit?

She began to crawl towards him on her knees, stopping only about a foot away. "I do need more practice, you know." she asked. "I've only ever done this once. And I didn't even get a proper _look_ at you the last time, because the lighting was so bloody awful—"

"Colin Creevey, mutant squids, Peeves, nasty little rubber novelty items, and loads of buggery while they all swim about in giant vats of rotten tapioca pudding!" burst out Draco.

That image even gave Ginny pause for a moment.

"You know, I didn't like tapioca pudding to begin with," she said.

"Neither do I," said Draco. "Sweetheart, please. _Please._"

"Does this mean that you don't want me?" Ginny asked sadly, leaning forward so that Draco had a very interesting view. She heard the sound of tearing. She looked down again to see that the silk sheets had ripped in several places under his hands. He glared at her.

"Where did you learn to torture men this way?" he asked through gritted teeth.

"I don't know anything along those lines that I didn't learn from you," Ginny said honestly.

"That's it. You've reminded me that I'm the only one corrupting your innocence, and you _know_ what that always does to me…" Draco threw a sheet over her. "I'm going to pretend that you've turned into Professor McGonagall for about the next ten minutes. Either go somewhere else, or start giving me detention and then telling me all about how I was cleaning out the Potions closet with a mop and caught you shagging Filch."

Ginny decided that it would be an opportune time to visit the loo. Clutching the sheet firmly around her body, she tiptoed out of bed, leaving Draco mumbling something about cauldrons of bubble and squeak.

Ginny wished that she had a watch. She didn't think that ten minutes had gone by yet. She peeked through a crack in the door and winced. The entire comforter seemed to be lying in small shreds on the floor. _Hopefully Draco won't have to pay the Crystal Palace a replacement fee… of course, with all the Malfoy money, I suppose that it doesn't much matter._ She began opening cabinet doors, running her hands over luxurious thick towels, and fingering the golden spigots of the sunken marble tub. _Wonder if there's time to take a bath…mmm. Wonder if Draco would take one with me?_ But the round tub was huge; it would certainly take more than a minute or two to fill, and Ginny reluctantly gave up on the idea. There was a dressing area with a small sort of chaise longue behind the tub, upholstered in satiny green fabric. A tiny round table holding a small gold pasteboard box stood next to it, and a matching green silk robe hung on a standing rack beside it. Ginny reached for it and put it on. There was something silly about standing there naked by herself, she thought.

The material was smooth and slippery next to her skin, and she gave a luxuriant wriggle, lying down on the chaise longue. It was very comfortable. _I wonder if I look pretty in this. I'll be going out to see Draco in just a minute or two, after all._ She looked up and saw herself reflected in a standing mirror. Her face was flushed and her hair hung down to her shoulders; the green silk made her skin creamy and brought out the golden flecks in her eyes. Her lips looked more lush than usual. Fuller. She touched them. They felt pleasantly bruised. She reached down and opened the robe a little. She shifted position, remembering what Draco had done for her only a few minutes before. The only problem was that it had been too brief. Why had he stopped? She'd wanted more and more…

Ginny shifted again, and groaned. She didn't know if it was the effects of this room or of thinking about what had happened between them so recently, but she was right back to where she'd started.

She flopped back down on the chaise longue and wondered if it would be wise to commence certain activities. If she initiated them on her own, of course, they couldn't begin to compare, but knew how long Draco was going to be, after all? _Well… maybe…_

A shadow moved to block the light above her. "Did I hear something?" a silky voice asked.

Ginny quickly started scratching her thigh. Maybe he'd think that something had just itched. "D—" Ginny cut the word off before it could get out of her mouth. She'd almost called him by his first name. "Did you just come in?" she asked lamely.

"Perhaps I was watching you for just a bit," Draco said softly.

"Oh. Um… " Ginny looked down.

"You're blushing. See?" He pointed in the mirror. "Would you like to know what I saw?"

"I think I know," said Ginny. "But I suppose I'm not sure how much."

Draco pulled her back to a sitting position, standing behind her. "You opened your robe," he said. "It's closed again. What a pity." He pulled at the silk tie until it fell loose. "Then…" He mimicked her earlier actions. "Is that about right?"

"Ohhh," sighed Ginny. "Yes. But it didn't feel like that at all."

"Then… well, you seemed to be rather busy, sweetheart." One corner of his mouth turned up. "Didn't I satisfy you?"

She looked up at him. What was the point of retreating into shyness again? Why did she keep doing it? Why couldn't she seem to stop? _Hold back,_ part of herself whispered. _Hold back some, still. He could take too much. Draco could take everything._ "I… it felt wonderful," she said. " But I wanted more. And it isn't the same when, er… when it's only me."

"Isn't it? Perhaps your technique is to blame. I could act as your coach; you might think of it as being rather similar to Quidditch practice. Although I doubt that you'd want to try out my advice on the pitch, with all of Hogwarts watching…"

She did blush a bit more then.

"Come on," Draco coaxed, sitting on the edge of the chaise longue. "Let me see your moves."

Ginny moved away slightly, hoping that her hair was covering the really red parts of her face.

"Sweetheart," he said, "I really do want to watch."

She saw him lick his lips, just once. His eyes were glued to her. That little sense of power stole back.

So Ginny did show him some of her moves, and he did provide quite remarkable coaching. She was sure she'd never had any Quidditch advice nearly as useful, nor any that left her feeling anywhere remotely so unsettled.

She leaned up on her elbows afterwards, not quite daring to look at him. What he'd _said_ to her! _He imagined… and I was touching… and he said he wanted to… oh, shite, what now?_ He touched her shoulder, and she forced herself to look up. He was smiling down at her. While the smile looked very strained, nothing seemed wrong otherwise. She breathed a silent sigh of relief.

_I'm being ridiculous. Draco said that he only imagined it. That's no different from what we've been doing all along, really. It was only part of the game._

"Better?" he asked, sounding very innocent.

"Worse," she admitted.

"How very sad."

"You knew that would happen!" Ginny pointed an accusing finger at him.

"Guilty as charged," said Draco. ""I've got some very important things to show you, and I didn't want you to be in a state of utter frustration. But it doesn't really suit my purposes, either, for you to be, er, shall we say… fully satisfied quite yet. I promise you that you'll be completely sated by the end."

She pondered that. _I know I can trust Draco there._ "Well, I'm glad that you got something out of it anyway," she said. _He certainly must have done, considering what my hands were up to. I think. I'm far from sure what was going on, by the end. _

Silently, Draco got to his feet in front of her. She looked up at him, and then she gulped. She could clearly see the graphic evidence that she was wrong. "This has gone far enough. You've absolutely got to let me help you now," she said, determinedly reaching for his trousers again.

He stepped back. "Don't make me restrain your hands," he said. "That's a bit much for tonight, sweetheart."

"Why are you torturing yourself this way?" she exclaimed. "I just don't understand."

"You will," said Draco. He moved further back still, out of her reach. "It's time to begin." He started unbuttoning his trousers.

Ginny's tongue seemed to have stuck to the roof of her mouth. "I thought you weren't going to let me, uh—" she squeaked.

"I'm not," Draco said softly. "Look, but don't touch. I want you to stay on that chaise longue."

_Wild hippogriffs couldn't drag me away from it, if that meant you'd stop,_ Ginny thought rather incoherently. Draco had moved completely into the light. She would finally see _everything._

The linen trousers dropped to the floor with agonizing slowness. Underneath, he wore elegant green silk boxers, monogrammed with his initials. His legs were thin but beautifully muscled, she thought; all she'd really seen so far was that one thigh when he'd pushed the trousers up. _He has really, really big feet. Huh. I suppose that means that what all the Gryffindor girls used to whisper about in the common room at three in the morning is actually true after all. Harry had awfully small feet, come to think of it._

"Keep your eyes on me," said Draco, and Ginny thought that if there had ever been a piece of unnecessary advice, that was it. She watched his large hands move down his taut stomach with agonizing slowness. Now his thumbs were past the little trail of silvery hair going down underneath his belly button, and starting to pull the green silk over his narrow hips. He turned a bit. Slowly, slowly, the boxers came down over his slim, muscly buttocks. Ginny made a painful sound. She couldn't see a _thing_ except his arse. It was a gorgeous arse, but it wasn't enough. He looked over his shoulder at her, and she expected a sort of coy smirk on his face. She didn't get it. His eyes had the intensity of smoldering gray coals. Slowly, he turned all the way towards her.

She had always thought that having one's breath literally taken away was just a figure of speech, but apparently it wasn't. She really couldn't breathe; she seemed to have forgotten how, and then she suddenly remembered, which was a very good thing, because if she couldn't breathe, then she couldn't thoroughly examine the phenomenon in front of her. She couldn't stop thinking about pale perfect Carrera marble pillars and Michelangelo's David dying of jealousy at the sight. But there were all of those things that made it uniquely Draco's, too; the way it was so very… and then there were those really, really large… (_I wonder how it would feel to… I wonder if he'd like it if I…?)_, and that enormous er, well, and… _Mmm. I think I smell chocolate._

Ginny leaned closer. Draco drew back. The green silk boxers went back on. "That's enough for now," he said hoarsely.

Tears were crowding at the back of her eyelids. "You don't want me to touch you?" Ginny asked in a very small voice.

"I do," said Draco. "I will. But not now. I want you to tell me something, sweetheart. You've gotten a really good look at me for the first time, yes? Tell me the very first thought that pops into your head."

Ginny bit her lip. A thought had popped in there, all right.

Draco caressed her shoulder. "Complete honesty. Remember? I've shown myself to you, and it's time for you to do the same."

"That thing could not possibly fit," she blurted. "And don't laugh!"

"Oh, I wasn't going to, I assure you."

"I mean, even if we were going to do that… ever… " She fumbled. "How the hell could you get it to work?"

"It wouldn't be easy," said Draco, kissing her neck. "Why do you think I wanted to take an entire week to lead up to your very first time?"

Ginny didn't answer. A very faint voice in the back of her mind was trying to tell her something, but she didn't much want to listen to it. He was nibbling on an exquisitely tender spot under her ear. For all she knew, the voice might want him to stop.

"You'd need to be prepared in every imaginable way, and now you understand why, don't you?"

She nodded. He had moved on to her earlobe.

"Such luxurious surroundings here, don't you think?" said Draco. "All of your senses could be slowly, deliciously stimulated. Have you liked everything we've done so far? Well, there are so many more refinements."

"That hot tub looks quite nice," Ginny said rather feebly.

"Oh, it is, for a bit of fun," said Draco. "But there's a private bath just down the hall, and it's so much better. The prefects' bathroom can't begin to compare. You'd love it, sweetheart."

"A private bath? What do you mean?"

"It's a part of this wing, of course."

"A part of—I don't understand. How can all of this be one private wing when we saw Professor Flitwick running about with that Devyani woman?"

"Things aren't always what they seem to be," murmured Draco. "But don't worry about it." Ginny would have asked him what he meant, but he began to lick the shell of her ear then, and she lost track of things for a few moments.

"Yes, I'd dearly love to get you in one of those hot pools, sweetheart," he said. "Underwater play is perfectly delightful, you know. The most astonishing positions are possible… and you're very flexible; I wonder if we might try…"

Ginny pulled her head away from him, even though it literally felt painful. "But we can't actually do it," she made herself say. "You know that. You know that none of it will really happen."

A shadow passed over Draco's face, gone so quickly that she barely had time to see it. Then he smiled. "Of course not," he said. "It's all part of the game." He tilted her head back and looked deeply into her eyes. "Remember that, sweetheart. Whatever I might say, whatever you might reply, it's all just part of the game. That's what you need to remember now."

Something deep inside Ginny's body quivered. It might have even been in her heart. "Why… why _now_?"

He kissed her jawline, lingering on the spot where it met her ear and all of the nerves seemed to come together. "Because now we're going to start playing a new game, sweet. I'm going to help you understand a bit more about how I'd answer your question."

"Question?" asked Ginny from inside the whirlpool.

His hand lingered tenderly on her back. "About the precise details of… er… how I'd 'get it to work', as you put it."

_Oh,_ thought Ginny. _That question! Uh… maybe some questions shouldn't be answered. _She should tell Draco that. Of course she should simply open her mouth and tell him that. And yet deep, deep within her, a sinful whisper was starting to tell her that yes, she really did want to know. The world spun round, and she clutched onto his shoulders. _Damn, I wish it would quit doing that!_


	50. An Unexpected Word

A/N: Well, this chapter got cut from its NC-17 version… um, a lot. I hope it still works as an R! And yes, it's still quite the R.

Thanks to all readers and reviewers and people who sent me PM's, especially: Alice Cullens (don't worry about the fic ending too soon… ;), sweet-tart 33, QueenofNight, AryaElf, and IJustSailedAway. Who brought up a good point…

No, we don't really know what's going on with Draco here. So what evil scheme is he actually up to? Ginny will learn the answer a few chapters from now, and that's all I'll say right now …

;)

+++  
It is not enough to conquer; one must also know how to seduce.  
- _Voltaire_

Suddenly, the room took a tremendous lurch to the left and began dragging her down. _What the hell was that?_ Ginny made a strangled, frightened sound in her throat.

"Mm, yes. I think you'd make a noise just like that. There are giant ostrich feathers in the cabinet next to the bed," Draco was whispering now, stroking her. "Have you ever been tickled with an ostrich feather? No? I imagine they haven't. I think I might do so in some exceptionally interesting ways during that week. You're so delightfully responsive, sweetheart—"

His voice faded in and out, in and out. She struggled back to the surface.

Draco was running his hands along her waist now, whispering something about what he wanted to do to her, how he'd make her ready for sinful things, forbidden things. She heard a word or two, here and there. _Gold box. Open. Find out. Wonder. If I? Would you?_ The horrible frustration pounded and throbbed through her body, mingling with the waves of darkness pulling her down. She just couldn't _stay_.

His voice was growing impatient when she resurfaced. "Sweetheart, now do you understand why I've teased you so often? It's been torment for me, worse than for you, I think. But I've been trying to make you ready, and that's what I'd need to do during that week of preparation. As we reached the very end, it would all feel like absolutely exquisite torture, but it's only for your sake— hello? Are you even listening to me-"

Draco's voice was cut off, as sharply as if a wireless station had been switched. And then she was being shaken too, big hands on her shoulders, her head bobbling back and forth. Draco's face came into focus. She blinked.

"Weasley!"

The sound of her last name jerked her out of the smothering force, whatever it was.

"Don't call me that, Malfoy—"

"Then _wake up_ while I'm trying to describe the pre-deflowering process to you," he snapped.

"Wh-what?"

He was frowning at her. "You heard me. Wake up. You were… gone. You'd disappeared somewhere else, and I don't think it was anywhere particularly good."

"That's not a very seductive way to talk," said Ginny, shaking her head in an attempt to clear it. What the fuck had just _happened?_

"Damn it, I can't keep up the seduction routine _all_ the bloody time." He leaned against her with a sigh.

"So it's just a routine to you, then, Malfoy? Ooh—"

"Shut up. You scared the fuck out of me. I kept shaking you and _shaking_ you until I thought your head was about to fall off, and you wouldn't even open your eyes. I even used an Ennervation spell, and it didn't do any good. I was about to—I don't know, there are some Dark Enervation spells-"

"You'd use those on me?" demanded Ginny, hands on her hips.

"I was getting a bit desperate." Draco rubbed a hand over his face. "What the hell just happened to you?"

"I don't know." Ginny made a helpless gesture. "I couldn't listen to you anymore."

_That really didn't come out the way I meant,_ she realized when she saw Draco's face.

"If you thought, if you really believed—" he muttered. He whipped round to look at her. "Why do you think I'm telling you these things?"

Ginny's brows wrinkled. There was an astonishing transparency in his eyes, and she caught at it, forcing herself to keep looking at him steadily, this sinfully beautiful man sitting in front of her who had dropped his elegant, seductive wiles for the moment.

"I don't exactly know. But I meant what I said." She was surprised at how firm her voice was. "I'm not having actual sex. I'm not going all the way with you tonight. Nothing that you say or do will change that. It just won't, even though…" _I feel absolutely desperate,_ she almost added.

His brows came together in a thick dark-blond line. "So you really mean you think I'm planning to trick you into it?"

"No, I don't, but—oh, I don't know!" burst out Ginny. "I know that you'd never force me, but you have this way of _putting_ things, of seducing me with everything you say and leading me further and further than I ever thought I'd go, and before I know it you've got me doing things that I never dreamed I'd do in a million years!"

Draco bent his head. "Have you done anything tonight that you didn't want to do?"he asked, his voice intense. "Think. Think before you answer."

"No, I haven't," she admitted. "But you don't understand—"

"_You're_ the one who doesn't understand." Draco leaned close to her. "My promise was real. I won't break it. I wouldn't if you begged me. I wouldn't if you _attacked_ me. I'm not joking. I… if we had a Bonder, I would make a bloody wizard's vow that no matter what, we are not actually going to fuck tonight! I swear it on my magic, I swear in on the Malfoy millions, I'll swear it on fucking _anything_ that no matter what, I won't do it." He looked at her seriously, as if trying to find something in her that she herself didn't know was there, and Ginny had a strange thought. _Does he know something that I don't?_

_Bzz bzz. Psst psst. Voices hissing in the corridor as she stole from room to room, looking for him. Her heart pounding, desperate-_

"Shite, will you listen to me?" snarled Draco.

Ginny struggled up and out of the whirling darkness. "I'm sorry," she groaned. "I can't do this very well just now."

His voice was very quiet now. "Do you want me to leave you alone?"

"Do I want you to- _what?_?"

"You heard me. Would you like me to go into the bedroom and leave you here, alone? I'll do it."

Ginny stared at him. "I didn't say that. D—Malfoy, listen to me—" She bit her tongue at her near- slip, but he clearly hadn't caught it.

"If you want to stop what we're doing, we'll stop now. Do you think I'm joking? I'm not."

"_No_! That's not it at all. Something awful's happening and I don't know what it is and- "

The dark dragging wave slammed into her full force, shoving her down a dank corridor, into a cell. _He sits on the bed, his head drooping, his silvery hair dulled. Draco, Draco, look at me, she pleads. But he doesn't look up. He doesn't even know who she is. You don't know what I went through to get here, she's saying now. You don't know the risks I've taken. Draco. It can't be too late. It just can't._

"Oh, shite," groaned Ginny. "Kiss me again. Quick. Kiss me and concentrate on the bond." She didn't wait for Draco to obey her; she simply grabbed his head, pulled it to hers, and planted her lips on his.

_She breaks into the cell at last and rushes towards that other Draco on the bed, shaking him by the shoulders. He doesn't respond to her. There is nothing more she can do. I can't get him out. I can't help him. I can't do anything at all. I've failed._

Ginny moaned in horror. Draco tried to prolong the kiss, to keep her with him, but she pulled back as hard as she could. Whatever her vision had been, he hadn't shared it. She could clearly see that in his confused eyes.

"We haven't cemented the bond," she blurted, taking his hands. "We haven't done enough. We have to do more, whether we want to or not."

_Oh, that was the wrong thing to say!_ she realized too late.

"I bloody well told you, Weasley," Draco said harshly. "You can stay in here on your own until it's safe to leave. I won't do this, I _can't_ do this, when you don't want it anymore. It won't work. I should have known better than to try."

"Will you shut up!" yelled Ginny. "I saw you in Azkaban, and you didn't even know who I was and I shook you really _hard_ but you just sort of fell over to one side on the cot and you didn't even look at me and for all I know you were dying or something equally horrible and oh, Draco, we've got to _do_ something!" She burst into tears.

He pulled her close and stroked her hair with his hand. "Shh. It's all right."

"It is _not._ It is not all right. I saw—"

"I don't know what you saw. Whatever it was, I didn't see it. Hush. You're about to have hysterics."

"I'm not. Weasleys don't have hysterics."

"All right, then you aren't. You're a very, very brave girl, and only evil, cowardly Slytherins have them. Shh." His hand smoothed her hair over and over.

She gave a long, shuddering sigh and nestled into his chest. As she did, she bumped up against something extremely hard. Draco gave an agonized groan.

"Oh—sorry. _Oh_." Ginny sucked in her breath. "That's it. That's why it isn't working; it's got to be. It's the one thing we haven't taken care of yet. Er… " She pointed towards the issue at hand, wishing that her cheeks would stop flaming.

"No, we certainly haven't 'taken care of it', as you so charmingly put it," Draco said a strained voice. "Why do you want to; can you just tell me that? As some sort of chore? Your Gryffindor good deed for the day? What?"

He didn't seem to notice that she'd called him by his first name, Ginny realized. She hadn't meant to. She didn't plan to do it again. It didn't matter. "Argh, you stupid arse, why do you always have to have a noble moment at the worst possible time?" She beat at his chest, and he caught her hands.

"Oh, I'm not being noble," Draco said almost harshly. But there was something sorrowful in his eyes; she was sure she saw it. "Trust me on that one. Just tell me why you want to get me off so damn much."

Ginny cringed slightly. "I didn't say—oh, I don't want to put it that way. I don't even want to think of it that way! If it's just getting you off, well, you could do that yourself. I want to give you pleasure too, don't you see?" She looked earnestly up at him. "I'm not like you. I'm not an expert; I don't know all the tricks, but I want to do anything I can for you. I want you to feel what I felt. I want to know what it's like when you feel pleasure, and I need to know that you're feeling it because of _me_. Isn't that enough?"

Draco's arms went round her, and then he was holding her tightly, his face in her hair. "More than enough."

Her hands were already moving down. "Then, can't I just—"

"Not yet. " He held her back from him. "I still don't know exactly what it is that you've seen. But since I certainly don't fancy the thought of ending up in Azkaban with no conjugal visitors on tap, it behooves us to come up with a—oof! Why are you hitting me again?"

"Don't talk to me that way anymore," said Ginny.

Draco hesitated, and then nodded. "I won't, then." He held her fingertips. "Do you understand what I'm getting at, though? We need to go as far as we can. Are you willing to do it?"

"Yes, oh yes." Ginny could feel herself quivering, as if her entire body had been turned into a harp string that Draco had reached out and plucked.

"Then go on trusting me." He pulled her up to her feet. "The bed's more comfortable, sweet. I can still call you that, right?"

She lay down on the bed, feeling strangely shy as Draco arranged himself comfortably along her left side. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder where the green silk robe was slipping off, not making any further move for the moment, and she was grateful.

"Do you remember what I was saying to you before you started having those visions of yours?" he finally asked. "Did you hear any of it at all?"

"Um, yes," said Ginny. "I think I remember something about ostrich feathers, and gold boxes, and… ermmm…"

"Yes?"

"And some awful plan you had for hours and hours of keeping me right on the edge on the seventh night of that week, right before we'd theoretically, er..."

"That's about the size of it," said Draco. "So to speak." His hand kept caressing her.

"But I don't understand. Why were you describing how you were going to torture me?"

He sighed. "Don't you know why I've waited this long without having had any kind of satisfaction myself?"

"No, I don't. You haven't told me."

"Well, I'm going to tell you _now._ I've given you pleasure over and over again tonight and I've watched, and it's really felt exactly like the tortures of the damned. That's what the seventh night would be like. It would be painful for both of us, but for me far more than for you."

Ginny pictured it, and imagined it being even worse for him. _That's what it's like for him now._ "I get it," she said. "I think. You're trying to actually show me how it would be for you."

"Yes! Yes, exactly."

"Is it actually that bad?"

Draco rolled over onto his back. "I think I'd like to be stretched on a good old-fashioned rack right about now," he said. "That just might help to take my mind off it."

"I'm sorry," said Ginny, feeling rather appalled. "But now you don't have to put yourself through this for another minute. The agony's over. Let me help you; I _want_ to. I can't even tell you how much—"

"Stop it. You're making it worse," said Draco, closing his eyes.

"But I understand it now! Why won't you let me—"

"Because you still don't understand enough. Your mind has made sense of it, but your body hasn't. You've got to know, truly _know_ deep down what it would it be like to be made ready for me."

"I can try," said Ginny. "Look, uh… to be honest, I think that no matter what we did, it would hurt me anyway. Wouldn't it?"

Draco was silent. She wondered if he was even going to answer her.

He pulled her closer to him, "I've been preparing you for me, slowly, gently," he murmured. "But our first time would be different. I would start to shape you to me. Just to me. To nobody else in the world to me. And when I did that, I couldn't be slow, or gentle, sweetheart."

_Sweetheart._ The word sounded all different on his lips now. "So it would have to hurt me?" she asked. "What we'd do, that first time?"

"I'm afraid it would, but it's not only that. I want you to understand exactly what I'm talking about," he said. "But the only way we can do it is to go a bit deeper into the trust game. Let me show you a bit of what I mean. May I?"

"Yes," whispered Ginny. "But what's the deeper game?"

He curled a strand of her hair around one finger. "Up to this point, I think that I've been telling you a sort of story. Yes? But this will be very different. From now on, while I'm touching you, I want you to tell me what you would want me to do if you could really have anything you want." His eyes were silver mirrors, looking into hers. "Your deepest desires, sweetheart. The most forbidden things you've ever wanted. That doesn't mean that you want me to do it now, and I certainly won't. You understand that you can be absolutely sure of that now. "

"I do," said Ginny. "We did already do that once, anyway. When I, uh, told you to prepare me for you."

"Yes, well, we're going to do this more than once, but it's not just that. It'll be very different. You really have no idea how different."

She held her breath.

"I want you to ask me for everything exactly as if you're begging me for it right now, at this very moment," he said. "Do you think you can do that?"

_Oh. My. Gods. He wasn't kidding. It'll be different, all right._

"I'll try. I don't if I can always manage it," admitted Ginny. "But I promise that I'll try."

He nodded, bringing up his hand to stroke his cheek. She closed her eyes and leaned into him. He felt his hands at the waist of the robe; he pulled at the tie, and it fell off. She was naked. Words from one of her art classes came back to her at that moment, randomly. _The nude in Western art is condemned to always wear nudity as a form of dress, to never really be nude. But a few exceptional images of nakedness have survived, of artists who have so welded artistic vision to their models that the viewer cannot deceive himself into believing that the subject is naked for him. He cannot make her into a nude…_ When Ginny opened her eyes again, she knew that up until that moment, she had been a nude. Now, for Draco Malfoy, she was naked.

He reached down and caressed her, touched her, murmured to her. She relaxed, opening to him. "Still all right?" he murmured. She nodded.

With his other hand, he reached for something on the side table right next to the bed. Ginny saw a flash of gold.

"I brought this with me," he said. "Let's see what's in it, shall we? No. On second thought, close your eyes, all right? Just at first. You'll like this."

Ginny shut her eyes. The slight weight of the tiny box lay on her chest. _What on earth is he doing?_ Rustling. _He's lifting the lid—oh!_ The powerful scent of rich, dark chocolate rose to her nose. "Open your mouth," he murmured. His fingers pressed a round truffle to her open lips, and she licked eagerly at the smooth, delicious taste of oranges and chocolate. At the same moment, the fingers of his other hand moved.

"Ooh," Ginny moaned, not knowing if the pleasure came from the sinful taste and smell of chocolate filling her mouth and nose, or the sinful feeling of those fingers of his on her body.

The next truffle was raspberry. He touched her expertly, teasing out perfect responses. Her moans grew louder.

Almond. Draco began moving his entire hand almost lazily, watching Ginny from under his dark-blond lashes. He watched her face flush.

Cherry. She licked her lips, searching out the last traces, sucking on the tips of his fingers. At the precise moment when she was most distracted by pleasure, he did something that made her eyes fly open in pleasure and terror and utterly forbidden delight.

"Oh!" Ginny tried to sit up. He pushed her back down, gently.

"Shh, shh," he soothed her. "It'll be all right. Trust me."

She gulped, and nodded. And then she did trust him, and he took her through her darkest fantasies, and her most forbidden fears. He finally allowed her to give him the release she'd wanted to offer him for so long, and as she heard his panting and felt him clutch onto her and shiver uncontrollably, he gasped into her ear, and he finally said…

_Ginny._


	51. An Unanswered Call

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: Arya Elf, A Wednesday Death, Queen of Night, JLeeP, and ijustsailedaway.

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It is I, my love, who knocks at your door. It is not the ghost, it is not the one who once stopped at your window. I knock down the door. I enter all your life. I come to live in your soul...

- _Pablo Neruda_  
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Ginny froze. It seemed as if _everything_ should freeze, as if time itself should stop so that she could examine every moment and break down each millisecond, searching to see if she had really heard Draco Malfoy say her first name while he shuddered in her arms. But time didn't stop, of course.

The eerie orange witchlight spilled over his shoulders, dappling his pale skin, breaking it up into spots and slivers as he shivered.

_Did I actually just hear him say 'Ginny'?_

She poked him in the side. He didn't respond at all, at least not in any direct way. He just kept clutching her so tightly every few seconds that each time, very briefly, she couldn't breathe.

_Did he really call me Ginny? I'm not sure about anything anymore._

She clasped one hand round his sweaty neck and one across the shifting, moving muscles of his back, holding him as close as she could. Maybe if she could only hold him in place, she really could stop the moment somehow, and then she'd know if he had really said…

_No. Not 'Ginny'. I really don't believe it._

But she couldn't manage it, of course, because Draco was so much stronger, and he was in the grip of a force that had taken away both reason and restraint. It was impossible to keep him in place. He turned so that his lips touched her ear.

His voice was soft, but it was very clear. She heard him perfectly now."Ginnyginnyginny," he breathed, all in one word, and there was no mistaking it this time.

_He said it! He did say it. Oh gods. Oh gods, what now, what happens now?_ She needed to see his face. If she could just see his eyes, then she'd know what to do. Ginny tried to lift his head up, but she couldn't even begin to hang onto the rest of him with one hand, and she lost hold completely. His sweaty body slipped and slid and he skidded right into her. She hissed in shock. His hands reached out, and he was trying to pull her to him.

"Please," he whispered. "Please, Ginny."

And it flashed through Ginny's mind, the realization. If she turned only slightly… he would… and that meant that before she even realized it, _they _would…

They were close. So close.

_Tell me what you want, sweetheart…_

Ginny shook her head, clutching onto his shoulders, trying to regain some sort of balance in the impossibly tilting world.

_Exactly what the fuck is going on?_

Draco opened his eyes. They were clear and bottomless as he searched her face.

Her hands slid up to his face. "Draco, what do you want?" In her head, it certainly sounded as if it should have been a stupid question. But as soon as she heard herself actually ask it, she knew that it wasn't. He was ready, more than ready, but he hadn't been asking her for sex. She never could have said how she'd realized that so quickly, but she had.

"Ginny," he said again.

"I don't understand," she said desperately. "What's happening?"

"I've come back," he said.

Time really did hang suspended then. It had to. It just couldn't be continuing. And yet it did, because the questions were spilling out of her like water through a broken dam. "What the hell is going on? What do you mean? Where have you been, what's happened over the last four months, _why_ did you come back?"

Draco took her hand and put it on his chest.

"Because I'm yours, Ginny," he said simply, as if that answered everything. Then he came to rest, his body wrapped around hers, and closed his eyes again.

That was when she started to cry.

Draco's eyes fluttered open again. He had a sleepy, sated smile on his face, and Ginny just had time to see it turned on her before his expression grew horrified. He was shaking her now, his voice harsh as he demanded answers, but she barely heard anything he said.

"Will you fucking tell me what happened, Weasley! I don't remember it; I never remember what happens right after I—"

She cried harder.

"Fuck, fuck, I didn't protect you after all. This was the one thing I didn't think of, after I tried so bloody hard to think of everything—"

Ginny suddenly realized exactly what Draco was thinking. "Let go of me," she snapped. "Nothing happened. Nice of you to be concerned."

He slowly sank back down beside her, running a hand through his sweaty hair. "Then why didn't you just tell me so? You scared the shite out of me."

"I didn't like the way you asked me."

She had stopped crying, but the longer they lay in silence next to each other, the more she wanted to start again. Finally, Draco reached over and touched her arm. She jumped.

"I haven't been sleeping well for a long time now," he said. "And I have… strange dreams. One of the odd side effects seems to be that right after, ah, well, you know… I'm completely out of it for about ten minutes. I'm totally unaware of whatever it is that might be going on during that time—"

"Is that what Astoria tells you?" Ginny asked, hearing and hating the nasty tone in her own voice.

"You know, now, that Astoria knows nothing about it," says Draco. "But I had no idea what might have happened just now when I wasn't quite conscious. I was afraid that I'd done something to you that I'd sworn not to do tonight. That's all."

"You didn't," said Ginny, struggling as hard as she could not to cry, because there was no reason at all to do it. Still, the tears threatened to rush through her entire body, the waves cresting higher and higher with each passing moment.

He rolled towards her. "Then everything's all right. That was amazing, by the way." His smile was pleasant and satisfied, and his eyes were smooth silver mirrors again. She searched them frantically for some trace of that Draco she had so briefly glimpsed. But he was gone. Gone.

He frowned. "Are you all right?"

"No," Ginny choked.

"Hmm. I can certainly see that you're not." He tapped a finger against his chin. "Perhaps I ought to do something about this little problem."

She grabbed his shoulders, unable to bear another moment of this smoothly thoughtful Draco so carefully planning out her pleasure. "Please," she begged. _Come back! Oh, please, come back to me!_

"Shh," he whispered in her ear. "You're really upset, aren't you? No more teasing, I promise. I'll give you exactly what you need. Shh… sweetheart."

_Don't call me that,_ she wanted to scream, but she was too incoherent to say anything at all by now.

Draco moved over her, nudging her knees apart, and a fringe of his silvery-blond hair fell into her face. He smiled down at her. "Tell me again exactly what you'd want. Right here. Right now. If you could have anything your heart desired." He leaned down and whispered in her ear. "Tell me the truth. Remember that I won't do it, no matter what; you know that now." He nipped at her earlobe. "Sweetheart, do you want all of me?"

_Yes._ The truth flashed through her mind. She did want Draco in the way that he meant. She wanted everything that he could offer her. He'd teased her body into readiness, and now she craved exactly what he'd prepared her for. She was jealous and greedy and she wanted to be impossibly sated by everything that he had to give. She wanted all of him, all of him for herself.

But none of that was what her heart wanted. That secret place was where she longed for things that were deeper, more frightening, more impossible. She wanted him even though she knew just how much he could hurt her, because she wanted to know what it was like for Draco Malfoy to become a part of her. She wanted the Draco back that she had so briefly, heartbreakingly glimpsed. That was what she really wanted. And that was exactly what could not be.

_I want you back!_ her heart whimpered. _I saw him, I know he's there, hidden inside you, I want to reach up and pull him out, and keep him, and never let him go._

"Come on," the real Draco coaxed. "Tell me."

She could have had that other Draco. In a flash, she knew that she could have pulled him to her and slid him into her and he would have made her his. But he had been as unreal as a dream, and now he was gone. No. No; the thought made her want to scream or curl up into a moaning ball or die; it was nearly as bad as seeing him in Azkaban, and she had to find him, she had to claw him out of the Draco who was in front of her; there had to be a way.

"Of course that's what you want," Draco crooned. "Everything that we've done so far has been foreplay. You need to complete what we've started, don't you? I've made you ready for me, and now—"

"Yes!" Ginny screamed. "I want all of it. Now! Everything—"

She broke off and grabbed him. He smiled down at her triumphantly, as if she'd finally given him the gift he'd been waiting for, but then she yanked him down to her as hard as she could and he slid between her legs, putting out both hands on the bed on either side of her head to break his fall into her body.

"I want it. I want you," she panted. "I mean it, I'm not playing the game anymore!" She took his head between her hands and shook him. "Where are you? I know you're in there! Come out… come back…"

"Shite!" he groaned. "What have I done? Sweetheart, stop. Stop. Don't _grab_ at me like that—you've got to stop, don't you understand?" He firmly picked Ginny's hands off him, trapping them on the bed under his fingers. "I didn't realize that it would be this bad; I swear I didn't, but I think that we've been in this room too long. Try to lie still. Shh. Just let me take care of you. I'm going to protect you. I swore that I would, and I won't—I _can't_ go back on that promise, no matter what. "

Ginny begged. She pleaded. She even started crying again, but Draco was implacable. He ended up having to put an Immobilization spell on her. She sobbed miserably, but he was relentless. Ginny could not move her lower body so much as a millimeter.

But he'd told her that he wouldn't make her wait, and he was as good as his word.

Time blurred and became liquid and dripped and ran all down Ginny's mind, and she couldn't begin to make sense of anything anymore, but the two of them were finally reaching a conclusion. She did know that.

"Tell me again what you want," he said harshly in her ear.

"You," whispered Ginny.

"Once more. "

"You."

"A third time. Come on, sweetheart. Tell me."

"I want you," Ginny repeated.

"Yes- _yes_," he growled in triumph, and then it all turned into a chain reaction, like the nuclear fusion that Ginny vaguely remembered having read about in one of the science books. Draco exploded, and so did she, and then the sun went supernova.

Ginny opened her eyes. She was staring up at the wooden underside of the canopy bed. When she tried to sit up, the room began to spin round in a very disconcerting way.

"Careful," said a voice next to her. A strong hand helped her to sit up. "A bit dizzy, are you?"

She turned, and it was Draco, of course, smiling at her with a satisfied look on his face. He handed her a cup of steaming tea, and she sipped at it. _Mm. Peppermint._

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yes," said Ginny, propping herself up against the headboard and blushing slightly. "I mean, it was all a bit… well…"

"Intense?" Draco cocked an eyebrow. "Well, sex with me can be rather overwhelming, of course. Even limited sex."

"Mmph." _Where did that robe go?_ Ginny could feel exactly how red her face was getting.

Draco reached out and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. "Sweetheart, the time for shyness seems past, don't you think?"

"Argh." She rolled her eyes.

"Here. It seems a shame to cover everything up, but I really do want you to feel perfectly comfortable. Yes?" He reached down and handed her some crumpled scraps of fabric. With a quick pass of his wand, they straightened out and resolved themselves into her knickers, lace bra, blouse, and jeans. He even turned away while she awkwardly dressed herself. When she turned back, he had a sheet neatly wrapped and tied round his waist.

"A spot of maidenly modesty?" He kissed her shoulder where the blouse was crookedly unbuttoned. "Technically, you do still qualify. I promised you that you would when we were done. Didn't I keep my promise."

"Yes, you did," said Ginny. "Even though—" _Oh, gods. Even though I begged you to break it._

"All right, then. Lie down with me now," said Draco, and he pulled her next to him.

They lay quietly for what felt like a very long time, and Ginny felt her heartbeat and breathing slow all the way down to normal speeds. Draco reached out and stroked her hair, and she nestled her head on his shoulder. She felt as if she were lying very, very still and allowing her sane self to slip back into her body, replacing the madness that had possessed her. The tiny voice was still screaming for that other Draco, the one she had seen and heard and held during those brief, frantic moments, but it was so faint now that she could just barely hear it in her head. Fainter. Fainter. Now it was silenced.

"Let's see if it worked," she said.

Draco nodded, as if he knew exactly what she meant. _Does he?_ she wondered. Then he turned and she felt his lips on hers, coaxing them open, and she knew that he did.

He kissed her carefully and thoroughly, and she willed her mind into the receptive state where magic could be made. The bond sizzled between them, and she shivered.

"Do you see anything?" Draco murmured into her mouth.

Ginny moved further into the kiss, exploring it. "Nothing," she said. "It all just feels sort of… blank." She tried to think. A shadow, maybe, a foreboding, but it was just a hint, and then it disappeared again. She broke the kiss.

"So, no visions of doom in Azkaban?" asked Draco, sitting up.

"No. I think you're safe."

"You did have a bit of an odd look on your face, at the very end." He watched her intently.

"I suppose there might have been a kind of uneasy feeling," Ginny admitted. "But it was so vague. I can't even be sure that I didn't imagine it."

"Ah well," Draco said lightly. "You could always catch a lift on the Azkaban yacht to console me, if it comes to that. I've corrupted enough of that innocence of yours by now to make sure that we can have a nice long visit—"

Ginny thumped her fist down on the bed. "Stop it!"

"Sorry. I'm sorry," he said, and she thought that he looked really contrite. "I'm a bloody idiot, aren't I?" She would have agreed wholeheartedly, but he turned his big silvery eyes on her then and leaned in and kissed her softly, and that made it very difficult to think about anything at all, at least for the time being.

**Author notes:** A/N: (Anise skips up to the end of the path. La, la... la la la... OOPS! It turned out to be the edge of the Grand Canyon. Luckily, I had a parachute. :)

The end of this chapter doesn't seem like a cliffhanger, but trust me, it is. The next chapter is when it all goes down.


	52. An Offer Made At Last

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially:

Queen of Night, ijustsailedaway, and Ju-PiAzZaLuNgA. There are some answers in this chapter… but that's all I'll say. ;)

Ginny lay in Draco's arms, the side of her cheek pressed against his chest. She could hear him breathing deeply and evenly. _He couldn't have fallen asleep… could he? No. It's only been a couple of minutes. But then, he said that he hasn't been sleeping well at all lately. So, maybe._ Her own arms tightened around him, and she felt again how thin he'd really become. It was hard to tell from simply looking at him, because he was so wiry and muscular, but he'd lost weight, all right. _And he didn't have all that much to lose before. Oh, Draco, where have you been? What's been happening to you?_ But she already knew that she wouldn't ask him.

Her hand stole out as if moving on its own, and her fingers ran themselves through his silvery hair, smoothing the thick strands. _I really just want to lie here forever,_ she thought. _I want to stay with him. I never want to leave. Fuck, what's wrong with me? It must be the room. It's got to be the room. _Her head felt hot and feverish, and her throat was dry as a bone; maybe she was actually getting sick. That would explain a lot.

Ginny sat up, gently disengaging herself from Draco. She picked up the cup of the cold peppermint tea from the bedside table and drank the rest of it. When she put the cup back down, she heard a small click, and then an annoyed sniff.

"Isn't it enough that you've got a body and Draco Malfoy wants to do all sorts of naughty things with it?" said a dreary voice. "Do you have to throw cups on top of me, as well?"

Ginny looked down and saw the female face on Draco's watch, which he'd put on the bedside table. "Oh," she said awkwardly, wondering just how much that watch had actually _seen._ "Er, sorry."

"It doesn't make any difference, I suppose," the watch said gloomily. "He'll never pay any attention to me now that you've shown up again." Ginny couldn't help thinking that she sounded exactly like Moaning Myrtle. _I suppose there's no point in putting on an appealing voice when Draco isn't listening to it._

"I don't mean to be rude," said Ginny, "but, uh, I find it a bit hard to believe that he ever paid you much attention in that way before. It's only that watches can't exactly take part in those sorts of activities, can they?"

"You're about as obtuse as most mortals, I see," the watch sniffed.

_That's it. I've had it with mouthy inanimate objects, once and for all._ Ginny opened the bedside table drawer and picked up the watch. "We're rather busy just now," she said. "So, if you don't mind—"

"Wait!" the watch shrieked, holding out both its hands. "I'm only trying to help, you know."

"Now _that's_ something I really don't believe. But if you've got something to say, then you might as well say it, I suppose."

"It's just this," said the watch. "I mark time. And before too much longer, Ginny Weasley, time will be very important to you. And then, you'll want to remember me."

Ginny looked at it narrowly. "What are you talking about? Who are you; _what_ are you? Aren't you just an ordinary wizarding watch?"

The watch face smiled secretively. "I am a Malfoy watch, and that means that I'm never ordinary. You'll see, in time. But for now, it just might interest you to take a look at exactly what time it _is._" The second hand tapped the hour.

Ginny's eyes widened in shock. _Three hours_ had passed since they'd first entered the room. She dropped the watch back on the table and pulled herself away from Draco, ignoring the whimpering protest her entire body seemed to be making. He opened his eyes lazily.

"Get back here," he said, reaching for her wrist.

"I can't," said Ginny through clenched teeth.

He opened his arms. "Back. Now. I miss you already."

"No," said Ginny, fighting everything in her that was currently staging a full-scale attempt to scream the opposite at the top of its lungs.

"Don't be silly. Earthshattering sex is lovely, of course, but I rather like simply lying next to you. Didn't you like it as well?" he asked, looking sad.

_Too much,_ she thought. _Much, much too much!_ "I… It's nothing to do with that," she said. "But we've been in this room three hours; I just saw it on your watch. I had no idea it was that long. So I've got to get back; I have to know what happened to Colin and Daphne and Dean—"

"I'm no better at Divination than you are, but I don't think that any precognitive ability is required to figure out what's happened to them. They're long gone, because they've certainly all got enough sense to have got out of those tunnels by now- or Creevey and Daphne do, at least, and I'm sure they've managed to drag the nobly protesting Dean Thomas with them. We've given them enough time to do it." Draco picked up her hand and started kissing it. "Or do you think they need a bit more?"

"I can't just leave them! You know I can't. I've got to go and find out exactly where they are now, so… well…" Ginny began to get up from the bed. Draco took her wrist in a firm grip.

"Sweetheart, the best favor you could possibly do them would be to steer clear of them for a bit," he said. "You said it yourself; Potter already thinks you've got something to do with what's going on at St. Mungo's. Don't give him a chance to connect you with them."

"No. I have to get back there," Ginny said stubbornly. "Anything could've happened by now; how do I know they really managed to get out?"

He put his hand on her thigh, and she felt the heat of his skin through her trousers. "Sweetheart, you can't seriously think that I'm going to let you get away from me now."

Something in his words chilled her, just for a second. Then she saw his smiling face, and she shook it off. "But you can't come with me yet. You know you can't. Harry's searching for you already, and if he found us together…" Ginny shivered. "That would be exactly the excuse he'd want most to get you into trouble you'd never get out of again. He's relentless. He'll never give up. I'm afraid for you, D-" She stopped herself before _Draco_ came out of her mouth, as it had almost done. _I'll never do it again. Not until he does it first when we aren't both half mad… no. I won't even think about that. I won't even remember him saying . Ginnyginnyginny, or please, or I'm yours, or anything else. _"I'm just afraid," she finished lamely.

"Ah." Draco sat back against the headboard. "Would you hide me, if it came to that? Maybe I could sleep in the cupboard under the sink in your studio."

"I—" _I'd do anything. But I can't say that! I can't. _"I would try to help you, as much as I could," Ginny finally settled for saying. "But I don't know what I _could_ do. I certainly don't have any influence over Harry. Maybe I would as his girlfriend, but otherwise—"

Draco's face darkened instantly. "If that's meant to be a joke, it's not the least bit funny."

Ginny turned back to him, sitting on the bed. "Of course I'm not going to have anything to do with Harry in that way. I don't want to ever see him again at all, if I can help it! But I don't know what I can do about him, either. I don't see how there's anything I can do, if he starts in on you." Her voice caught. "I don't know if you should stay here," she said, all in a rush.

"Don't you?" Draco smiled at her oddly. "Perhaps you're right."

_Stupid. Stupid! When am I going to learn to keep my big mouth shut?_ Ginny thought drearily. But then, Draco already had to know how dangerous it was for him to stay in London, anyway. Why _had_ he really come back in the first place?

He reached forward and took her hand, stroking it. "Would you run away with me then? I suppose we might try that. We could live on the road, sweetheart."

"A Malfoy, living on the road?" she asked as lightly as she could. ""I don't think you'd last a week. We couldn't very well take house-elves with us, you know."

"You may be right. I suppose I'd end up enduring absolute horrors along the lines of washing out my own boxers in a public loo, or something." Draco grimaced. "Look, I've been giving a great deal of thought to all of these things. I haven't seen any hideous visions of myself in Azkaban, but you have, and I do know that it's at least possible, so I don't dismiss it. But I truly don't think that there's anything to worry about just now. Do you remember when you found me trying to crack the lock on that door into St. Mungo's?"

_How could I ever forget,_ thought Ginny. "Of course I do. What's that got to do with anything?"

He reached out and played with a curl of her hair. "Well, you didn't know at that moment that I wasn't a desperate criminal, bent on blowing up St. Mungo's with carefully laid Explosive charms tied to dozens of pitifully mewing kittens whilst I cackled fiendishly. And yet—"

"It's not funny! Can't you be serious for once?"

"I am. I'm being very, very serious." Draco kissed the tips of her fingers. "Sweetheart, you're lying on a bed at the Crystal Palace with me now because when you saw me, you didn't betray me, which you easily might have done. So Potter didn't catch me. Ergo, he has no reason at all to railroad me into Azkaban, and he does need at least a bloody good reason. The Ministry hasn't changed so much as that."

"But—" Ginny stopped herself again. _But what are you going to do? Where are you going to go? Are you going to stay? What about Astoria? Am I going to see you again? How can I be apart from you now? But I have to be, I know I do, because it can't be any other way. You've made me yours, Draco, but only half yours, and then you stopped. It's worse than if we'd gone all the way._

"Well… anyway, I have to go back now," she said dully. "I don't see what else I can do. I have to find out what happened to my friends, at least, and then, I suppose I really don't know…" Ginny made a remarkably half-hearted attempt to begin shoving herself off the edge of the bed. She couldn't even pretend not to feel relief when Draco pulled her back.

"You can't seriously think that I'm simply going to let you naff off back to the tunnels under St. Mungo's," he said.

"Do you really have any better ideas?"

"I do. I'd like to make you an offer. I've been thinking about this for some time." Draco kissed the side of her neck.

"What kind of offer? Do you mean that you've got a plan for getting out of here without the Ministry being able to trace either one of us?"

"No, no. I'm offering you a position."

"Some sort of artistic commission?" A little spark of hope fluttered in Ginny's heart. Draco _did_ want to keep up their association, then, and he wanted it in a way that meant he respected her. "I—I mean, I'm really honored, but I don't think that this is exactly the time to talk about it. We'd have to wait until we were both back safely. And we'd really have to figure out how it could work. I mean, wouldn't we—well, it wouldn't necessarily be easy to have a strictly business relationship on the one hand, now that we've, er…" Ginny shifted uncomfortably.

"No, I didn't quite mean that. It's rather a different offer." He kissed her neck again, massaging the back of her shoulder with one hand, and he smiled as if he had a wonderful secret. "I've waited so long to tell you this, sweetheart. But the time's finally come."

Much later, Ginny would wonder if she had actually felt something in the air shift into a vacuum at that moment, or if time itself had seemed to warp. She knew that she couldn't possibly have sensed anything that was coming before Draco actually said it. She'd always been rubbish at Divination. But at his very next words, the world itself dropped away from under her.

"Become a Malfoy mistress," said Draco. "_My_ mistress."

His words were casual. At first, she thought she hadn't heard them. She hadn't understood what he'd actually said. Then, she was sure that he couldn't possibly have meant them.

"I don't understand," she said cautiously. "I thought we were through playing the game."

"It's not a game, sweetheart," he said. "It's an offer. I'll have the Gringotts letter sent round again tomorrow, if you like." His smile remained steady. His hand round her shoulder was warm and firm. As if she were a piece of property that he knew he would soon fully possess, she thought.

Ginny looked down at herself. She was still half-lying on the bed, but she had become weightless. She was floating in an empty space where everything was coming together and every idea was making sense at last.

The puzzle pieces clicked, one by one. First, Draco had played on her weaknesses- her desire to save him in Azkaban, her own guilt about assuming his motives were worse than they were, and then shoving him down into broken glass on the floor and having to save him from probably bleeding to death in front of her eyes. He'd taken advantage of the seductive magic in the room, and he'd used the bond between them, too. Once he had softened her, soothed and petted her, and made her comfortable in every possible way, he had invited her to explore her most forbidden desires, to bite timidly but deliciously on forbidden fruit. By the end of it all, her defenses were down, and she knew now that she herself had done almost all of the work of lowering them. And then he had led her further and further into her own corruption, bit by bit. But she had walked there on her own.

That was the cleverest part by far, thought Ginny as Draco's confident smile widened, showing the tips of his sharp white canine teeth. He had coaxed her to give in to her own fantasies, but he hadn't forced her into a thing. He had tempted her into giving up her fight against him, and she had fallen, but she had stepped off the edge of her own free will. Step by step, he had guided her deeper, deeper, and deeper still into her deepest wants and wishes, until she was begging him for everything that was most forbidden. But she had put the chain of desire around her own neck, and handed him the key.

_I was easy prey,_ thought Ginny. _And I can't even blame Malfoy for that part of it, can I?_

"Well, sweetheart?" he asked softly. "What do you think?"

She looked at the impossibly beautiful young man sitting next to her, smirking, and for a mad instant, she wished that the heavy wooden bed would fall in on his head.

He reached for her hand. "I know it's a bit of a shock. I do understand that. But this is the perfect solution; you have no idea how perfect it really is. You'll understand everything once I explain it fully."

She snatched her hand back. She couldn't endure his touch for another instant.

"Now, sweetheart—"

That word was what did it, she decided later. She stiffened, her eyes blazing."Don't you dare call me sweetheart! I never want to hear that word from you again, Malfoy, never, do you hear me?"

"Yes, yes, of course, all right." Draco spread his hands out in a placating manner. "We can return to last names for now if you'd like that better. I only want you to feel comfortable, you know."

"_Comfortable?_ There's nothing in the _world_ that could make me feel comfortable!" Ginny thumped her fist down on the coverlet, impotently. "I was right at the very start. Oh, I should've known all along; I never should've listened to your shite for one single second. This entire thing _was_ a trick from beginning to end."

"Sw- er, I mean, Weasley, if you'd just let me explain—"

"I don't want to hear any explanations from you, Malfoy!" she snarled. "Oh, fuck, how stupid I was to ever—to even-" Ginny had to stop; her voice was breaking up. She blinked back idiotic tears.

"Listen to me, Weasley," said Draco, in his most persuasive voice. "Hear me out, can't you? I'm offering you more than you can imagine, and you'll understand it once you've listened to everything I have to say."

Ginny wiped the back of her hand across her face, savagely. "What I understand is that you planned out every bit of this little seduction. And that's all I need to know."

"_Listen_ to me. That's just not true. At least, not—ah- all of it."

"How much is 'not all of it'? Ninety-nine point nine percent?"

"No such thing," protested Draco. "I mean, well, yes; some parts of it have been planned for months; I'll admit that. But there were loads of things I didn't know. I had no idea that the bond still existed; I was rather sure that it didn't. I wasn't planning on our coming to the Crystal Palace exactly when we did, not at all—"

"What do you mean, you weren't planning on getting here _exactly when_ we did? You mean that you _did_ plan on us ending up here at some point very soon, don't you?" demanded Ginny, pushing herself up within a few inches of him.

"Er… yes," admitted Draco. "That was one of the bits that _was_ planned."

"I knew it! I absolutely knew it. You meant to come here all along. Well, I can't say I'm surprised. What else was part of your original evil plot? You might as well tell me now." She glared at him.

"I suppose you're right. See how honest I'm being? I'd planned to get you here, as you already know, but yes, there were a few more things. You were meant to end up in this room, for one."

"What about Professor Flitwick and Devyani?"

"Er… have you ever heard of a certain Muggle saying that runs, 'if so-and-so hadn't existed, it would have been necessary to invent it?'"

"Yes," Ginny said suspiciously. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Draco squirmed. "I'm afraid that you're going to be a bit upset with me over this one…"

"If you define 'a bit upset' as 'hexing your balls off', then yes."

Draco gulped. "Don't you think that those might be very, very useful in the near future? When you decide to take me up on that offer, I mean. No, no! I remember your Bat-Bogey hexes, Weasley, as well as your wicked backhand with a Bludger. All I was about to say was that I'm not entirely sure if the professor and his lady-love actually existed at that particular moment, or not. They may have been only some sort of illusion. You see… this is a bit difficult to explain, but the Malfoy rooms exist in one of the soft places of the Crystal Palace. That's why we were able to come here through the portal in the first place. As the Malfoy heir, I wished that a distraction which would drive us into this room and keep us here would appear, and so it did."

"The Malfoy rooms?" echoed Ginny.

"Ah." A distinctly guilty look spread over Draco's face. "That. Yes, I didn't quite explain that bit, did I? Yes, this room… all of these rooms… these corridors, all of it, has belonged to the Malfoys since time out of mind."

A thought struck Ginny. "I've seen these before," she said slowly. "And it wasn't in an etching in that book."

"Which book?"

"Never mind. I've been in this entire place before. I know it. Malfoy, isn't this where I found you with Astoria back in May?"

"Yes," Draco admitted. "Or something like this, at least. These corridors and rooms shift and change, you know. They're not always quite the same. But they always belong to the Malfoys. Always have, always will do. That's why they link through the Malfoy vault at Gringotts as well."

Ginny looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. "This is the room that she was trying to get into when I first saw her. Isn't it?"

Had something flickered across Draco's face? She really didn't know. "I suppose it probably was, or a room just like it," said Draco. "And Astoria certainly couldn't get in it. This is a room of desire, Weasley. I didn't want her- _don't_ want her, I should say, and I never will."

Something very dangerous fluttered in Ginny's stomach at those words.  
She tried her best to ignore it. "Oh, who cares!" she said furiously. "That doesn't matter now! Nothing makes any difference now except that you tricked me to get me here, and this is even more proof of it. I _should_ hex you, Malfoy, I really should."

He shifted his weight so that he was just a bit closer to her, still not touching her. Balls, Weasley. Remember the necessity of the balls."

Ginny was silent, because she did remember it, all too well.

"What are you thinking, Weasley?" Draco's voice whispered in her ear.

"Things I won't tell you," she said without turning round.

"But you told me that you trusted me."

"Don't make me laugh."

"I proved that I was worthy of that trust," said Draco. "Yes, I did—look at me. I did. You know now that I was only trying to break into St. Mungo's because of the money. You know that whatever it was that you thought happened between us the last time you saw me, whatever terrible things you believed that I said, it simply couldn't have happened as you thought it did. I couldn't have been at the art gallery on the eighth of June. I don't know anything at all about it."

Draco paused for a moment, and Ginny thought about what she remembered that he did not. _He told me that he didn't care about Marie anymore. He said that she was a woman he'd loved long ago, and that she wasn't important now. Bill said that the spell was working, that it couldn't go wrong. Malfoy couldn't have lied about that, and he can't know now that he said it to me, either._

"And if you think that I'm not going to remind you of how I held back from having sex with you, exactly as I promised to do," he said, "then you're wrong, because I am."

"Oh! That's vile. That's stooping low, Malfoy. That was only _after_ you tricked me into telling you exactly what I wanted you to do to me, in every agonizing detail—" Ginny shut her mouth too late.

"I see," purred Draco. "So you admit that you really did want everything that I apparently didn't quite force on you?"

"All right—yes!" Ginny exclaimed. "I did want it. I'm not going to pretend I didn't. You're an expert at sex, Malfoy; you already know that. Of course I liked it. That doesn't prove anything."

"I'll tell you what it proves, Weasley." He spoke very deliberately. "I could have fucked you at least a dozen times over in the past three hours; more, I imagine. You were pleading with me by the end, and I still held back. Do you have any idea what it's like for a man to listen to a beautiful woman begging him for sex while she's lying naked under him, spread open, willing, eager, _ready_-"

The sound of a ripping sheet echoed through the air again. When Ginny glanced down, she saw a piece of silk clenched in Draco's fist.

"No, of course you don't," he said. "You can't know what it was like for me. But I protected you from yourself. You owe me a listen because of that."

"It never would have happened if it wasn't for you. Malfoy, you tricked me into it," Ginny repeated.

Draco let out his breath in a sigh. "Weasley, I wasn't done listing all the things that weren't a part of the evil plan, you know. There's one more. It's the most important of all."

"You _tricked_ me, I never would've done any of these things otherwise, and I don't want to hear—"

"'Conjugal visits in Azkaban,'" he said. "Does that ring a bell?"

"Um…" _Oh dear._ It did.

"How about 'I've got to be able to get in to visit the poor hopeless Malfoy prisoner in Azkaban, even if that means making the sacrifice of letting him at my virginal body now'?"

Ginny covered her face with her hands. Draco pried them away, not harshly, but relentlessly.

"When I began this thing, I had no idea that you thought you'd seen me in Azkaban," he said. "I don't know what it is that you're really seeing, but _you_ believe that it's a vision you can't bear. You told me that it's why you chose to lie down with me in this bed and give in to your desires, Weasley. Stop lying to yourself about that, at least."

The seconds ticked by on his watch, punctuated only by the second hand's sniffing, and his silvery-gray eyes were on her. She felt his fingers touch her arm.

"Listen to what I have to say," Draco said softly. "Just listen. Then if you want to leave me, you can."

"All right," she said, sitting stiffly across from him. "Where exactly are you going to start in on convincing me, Malfoy?"

Draco sat up, crossing his legs. "I told you. It's not like that. I've learned so many things in the last four months, Weasley; you really have no idea." He held up a hand. "I can't tell you much of anything now. There's no time, for one thing. But what happens in the next week is crucial. Let's start with tonight. You'd stay here—"

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Oh, I'll just bet I would."

"Hear me out. There are some very good reasons to stay here tonight, no matter what. If you try to leave, there's too much of a chance that the portal will pull you back to St. Mungo's, no matter how hard you try to steer it anywhere else. And you were right at the start. Your friends are a hell of a lot better off if they aren't caught with you or anywhere near you; the Ministry can't prove anything against them then."

"All right; I'll go along with this insanity, just for the sake of argument," sighed Ginny. "What would happen then?"

"I'd have a Malfoy house-elf go to your flat and your studio, and bring back anything you liked. All of your clothes and art supplies, I suppose. Then you'd have a very nice night's sleep. What would you like for dinner first?"

"That's not what I mean, Malfoy! I'm talking about what would happen after that. Tomorrow, I suppose."

"Well." Draco smiled lazily. "You do remember that week I talked about, yes? The week of preparation for your first time?"

Oh, yes. She certainly did. "Sounds familiar," she said guardedly.

"It would begin tomorrow. Here. In this room." He looked at her very directly, and something hot and traitorous throbbed through her body. Ginny was quite sure that this was the reason why she asked what she did next, because it clearly wasn't a good idea to even ask that question at all.

"Look, Malfoy—even if I had any intention of going along with this madness, why would anything that happened tomorrow be the beginning of anything? Don't you think that tonight was quite enough of a start?" exclaimed Ginny.

"You don't understand," said Draco."A beginning isn't only about what _happens._ A beginning has to do with intention. You enjoyed everything that we did tonight—yes?"

"Yes," muttered Ginny.

"You have no idea, none at all, how much deeper that sort of enjoyment is—how utterly _different_- when we both know that it's foreplay for the final consummation. When you can simply let yourself go, Weasley. Imagine that. When you don't have to hold back anymore, when there's nothing to fight… may I touch you?" His fingers hovered millimeters above her arm.

"All right," she said ungraciously.

Flesh skimmed flesh, and she shivered uncontrollably. "When you know that you've given in completely," he murmured. "When I've told you exactly how I'm going to make you mine, and by the end of the next few days, I deliver on just what I've promised. Nothing held back. Nothing forbidden, nothing at all. You cannot imagine, Weasley."

No. She couldn't, and she knew it. But she drew her hand back, because she still could.

"You haven't convinced me, Malfoy," she said flatly.

"I'm not trying to," he said. "I know that I can't. It doesn't work that way. You've got to decide on your own. Of course, I'm not above using a bit of persuasion." He grinned, leaning back against the headboard in a way that somehow made all of his chest and arm muscles flex at once, and Ginny's mouth went dry. Draco's mere _existence_ was more than a bit of persuasion, and a very unfair one, in her opinion.

"Fine," she sighed. "Explain it to me, Malfoy. I'll listen."


	53. So That Was Draco's Plan All Along

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: AdriannaZaria, Queen of Night, AryaElf, and ijustsailedaway.

This entire fic is done... but basically, the reason why I didn't update here for such a long time is that I wanted to post the REVISED version. But there are so many fics in the revision queue right now that if I wait until it's perfectly revised, it will never get up here. So this will be kind of the first revised edition. It might get revised even more at some point.

_Chapter 53_

_"I'll complete the story, though perhaps it might have been better untold. It was something rather shocking - indeed, very shocking."_

- Sheridan Le Fanu, _Uncle Silas_

"Oh, and here's another thing. We're doing this on my terms, Malfoy," said Ginny. "So you'd better be honest with me, if you think you're even capable of it. Start out by telling me exactly what would happen next, if I were actually mad enough to take you up on this demented offer, which I'm _not_."

Draco sat stiffly away from her. "I'll be completely honest with you. You'd have a long, luscious week of preparation, of pleasure, like nothing you've ever felt or imagined—oh, I would follow through on my promise, Weasley. Every bit of it. I'd arrange to have all your art supplies brought here. You can finish your work. You'd go to the _Bas-Bleu_ studio five days from now. And at the very end of it—on Halloween night, after your art opening- I would bring you back here, and I would finally take your virginity."

"At least you've laid all of your Snap cards out on the table, I suppose." She appraised him. "But I don't understand why you've deluded yourself into thinking for even one second that I'd actually go along with this. You offered me the same thing back at the end of May with that letter of credit from Gringotts. I tore it up into about a zillion pieces. You're just lucky you weren't in my studio at the time, Malfoy, or your balls would have been the least of your problems."

Draco winced, but he didn't look away. "That's why I wanted to explain."

"I'm listening," said Ginny. She leaned back against the headboard and crossed her arms.

"First, Weasley, you've got to understand the usual purpose of this room," said Draco. "It's generally used for companions and young boys during the month of pureblood initiation. Very similar to the one I remember when I was sixteen years old, actually."

_Oh, gods, how I wish he hadn't said that,_ thought Ginny. "That's very interesting historical trivia, I'm sure. But what does it have to do with me, Malfoy?"

"I told you that I'd learned many things over the past four months," he said. "I'm about to share one of them with you."

A shiver ran all through her. "We've been here over three hours now. Could you speed it up a bit?"

"No," he said, and his grey eyes were very serious on hers. "Listen to me, Weasley. This is bloody important. A girl hasn't lost her virginity in this room for at least five hundred years, but I've found out what would happen if she did. If it happens here, if you give yourself to me here, and only here—in the Malfoy room in the Crystal Palace, and at a time of power, such as Halloween night- then you're safe. You would have to be a virgin or it wouldn't work, but of course I know now that you are—"

"Safe? What do you mean, safe?"

"Nobody could ever harm you because of what we'd done." He kept his eyes on hers. "Weasley, we could do anything we liked after that; we could go anywhere at all, and we could do it together. Safely."

More puzzle pieces clicked together in Ginny's head. "Is this the same thing as what you outlined for me back in May, at the cottage? When you told me about taking me to the Malfoy villa in France, and to NewYork, and to the Bahamas?"

"Ah… it's similar, I suppose. But what I didn't know at the time was that none of it was really possible then; that's why it was so wrong of me to send you that Gringotts letter. You simply wouldn't have been safe. I've learned in the last few months that this is the only way to guarantee your safety."

"If you remember telling me about those little plans of yours at the cottage in May," said Ginny, "then you remember what my reply was then! I don't know why you think it would be any different now, simply because it's _safe_, as you put it. What kind of a trade is that for becoming your—" She stopped, remembering how violently he'd reacted when she'd used the word _whore._ _And I don't want to use that word about myself, either_. "Official Malfoy mistress?"

Draco retreated slightly, and Ginny saw her furious face reflected in his eyes. "It's not like that at all, sweet- _don't_ take out your wand- do I still have to call you 'Weasley?'"

"_Yes!_ Except that very soon you won't have to call me anything, because I'll be—"

"No, no! Just give me a bit more time. Please. What you'd give me would be priceless, Weasley. Never, never think I don't understand that. There's nothing I wouldn't give you in return—nothing."

Draco held out his hands to her, and she looked at them. Beautiful, strong, well-shaped hands with those knobbly fingers. Oh, she remembered all too well what those fingers could do. His face looked so appealing. _There's nothing I wouldn't give you._ But he hadn't even mentioned giving her anything that she really wanted yet.

"Malfoy, why do you want me to do this with you?" Ginny asked desperately.

He stared at her. "Are you joking?"

"No, I'm not. _Why?_ Is it just the novelty of shagging a virgin, and you're going to get tired of me after the first time? Is that all it is?"

"Of course not!" Draco started laughing. "Sw—all right, Weasley, you're still so innocent; you have no idea at all, do you? Or you wouldn't say anything as thick as that. Gods, but how I'm going to enjoy teaching you. Once you're thoroughly corrupted, you know, we can really begin to have fun." He tried to reach for her. She avoided him.

"So you only want me for general, all-purpose sex, then?" she asked.

He gave a frustrated sigh. "No, that's not it at all."

"What, then?"

"I just—" He stopped, looking oddly uncertain. "I don't know. But I can't—" He shook himself. "Think of it this way," said Draco. "You're perfectly aware of all the reasons to refuse my offer. There's hardly any need to go over those again. What about some reasons to accept it?"

"I can't think of a _single_—"

"Oh, no?" asked Draco, and then, without any warning at all, he leaned in and kissed her.

Ginny tried to resist him. She really did. The problem, of course, was that she wasn't resisting him at all, but herself, and that was a losing battle. He was tender and careful and very, very thorough, and at last, she sighed and gave up and let him explore her mouth, and she began searching for the chocolate again, and then it was all over. Deeper. Deeper. Something began to tingle and sizzle. _Oh. The bond._ And then…

"You tricked me!" she accused.

"Well, I did warn you about my possible use of persuasion," He shrugged, looking disgustingly unrepentant, in her opinion. As much as she could tell from about an inch away, anyway.

"Oh, yes, and there's another thing, of course," he murmured. "Weasley, did you see anything? Such as, oh, I don't know… a certain prisoner, slumped on a certain cot in a certain cell…"

"Shut up."

"Ah. So you did see something."

"I don't know," she said through clenched teeth. "I'm not sure. You can rot in Azkaban for all I care, anyway."

"Really? So you don't mind if I end up locked away for life, losing hope, waiting for a footstep that never comes and a voice I never hear—"

"Malfoy, you're an absolute fucker," she muttered under her breath, and then she grabbed his head and kissed him again.

_Nothing. Nothing. Dark, gray, misty. Unease. Something not quite right? Maybe. Something coming. A pulse, like a heartbeat, about to break through. Something trying to form. Trying to take shape… Oh! _

"_No," said that painfully young Draco. "This can't be." And then he raised his wand-_

Ginny gasped.

"Well?" asked Draco, smiling at her.

_Oh gods, oh gods. What did I just see? That didn't have anything to do with Azkaban. It couldn't have done. I don't know where it happened, but it certainly wasn't in a cell at Azkaban. Am I somehow seeing things from Malfoy's past, things that can't be changed now no matter what I do? Fuck, how I wish I knew!_

His face sobered. "You did see something, didn't you, Weasley?"

She turned to one side. "I don't know what I saw," she said to the tip of his nose.

"Neither do I," said Draco. "Divination's a very woolly subject at the best of times, as I believe Granger used to say. So forget about that, just for now."

"Oh, I already have," lied Ginny.

"Yes, yes, your indifference to my rotting away in Azkaban duly noted, Weasley. But what about this?" He leaned in and kissed her again, very gently, no more than a brush of his lips against hers. She groaned. "Ah, yes, you feel it as well, don't you?" he whispered. "Are you really willing to simply walk out of this room and leave that behind you?"

"Malfoy, I…" _Gods, how to even say this to him?_ She didn't know how to put it into words herself. It didn't help that her head seemed to be whirling round and round in dizzy circles that were threatening to whirl her right out of that room. Ginny looked down briefly, trying to collect herself. _No matter what I saw, or what I thought I saw, that can't make me accept this offer,_ she thought. _I'd hate myself for the rest of my life if I gave in to Draco Malfoy because I wanted to save him from something that I don't understand, something that I don't even know is real. So that's got to go right out of the equation_.

"You know that I feel it too," she said flatly. "But there are so many things you don't understand, Malfoy. I don't even know where to begin. I know what it's like for pureblood girls in your sort of circles. They can do just as they please; I've heard that they all start having sex whenever they want to, and nobody cares, or thinks any the worse of them for it. But it isn't like that in families like mine. Girls are expected to be virgins until they get married. I've already gone so much further than I'm supposed to, and yet you tell me that I'm still so innocent—it frightens me, Malfoy. You want me to give up everything to you, and I don't see any good reason to do it."

She waited for his reply, impossible thoughts swimming in the back of her head, thoughts that she wouldn't allow to the surface. _If you said that you cared about me, that would be enough of a reason. More than enough. And I wouldn't be frightened anymore._ That might have been one of them.


	54. Ginny's Question

A/N: Thanks to all readers!

_Chapter 54_

Draco's brows met in a scowl. "How can you say such a stupid thing, Weasley? There's every reason. You know that we both want this, and now we can have it safely. I've found a way."

"I'd give up too much," said Ginny. "And I don't see that you'd give up a thing, Malfoy."

"Don't be an utter arse. I spent _months_ planning this out, I took risks you'll never know. I've given up things—" Draco seemed to grope for words. "I can't tell you. I can never tell you, Weasley."

She stopped. Her heart fluttered. "What have you given up, Malfoy?"

"Didn't I just say that I can't tell you?"

"Yes. I heard that," she said.

"It's for your own safety," said Draco. "Weasley, what I've done, _everything_ I've done, is only to keep you safe. But I can't tell you why."

A huge lump seemed to be forming in her throat. "Yes, well, apparently, you can't tell me much of anything. You never really did explain your reasons why you even wanted me to become the official Malfoy mistress in the first place, did you?"

Draco expelled all his breath in a sigh. "Look, I want you. I've never wanted any other girl this much in my life. I've risked things for you that you'll never know. Isn't that enough?"

"No," said Ginny. "That's not enough. I need to get back to my friends now. If anything's happened to them—Colin or Daphne or oh, gods, Dean! It's all my fault that Dean's there. He never would've gone down to the tunnels if it wasn't for me."

A change came over Draco's face. "Oh. I see. You're suddenly excessively concerned about the fate of Dean Thomas; is that it?"

"If you mean that I care about what happens to my friends, then yes, you're right," Ginny said icily.

"Only he'd like to be quite a bit more than a friend, wouldn't he?"

"And what if he would? He'd have more to offer me than you could, Malfoy," said Ginny, feeling as if she were inching further and further out onto a line without any net.

"Don't make me laugh. Thomas couldn't offer you a fucking thing. Don't you go to him. Don't you dare." Draco's voice had gone dark and feral, and the temperature around the bed suddenly seemed to have dropped twenty degrees.

"I'll do whatever I like. Don't think you can stop me. And you don't know anything at all about what Dean has to offer me!"

"Nothing. That's what he has, compared to me. You don't understand what a Malfoy can give."

"All right. What have you got, Malfoy? Tell me what you could give me!"

"Anything you'd ever want," Draco said intensely. "All the pleasure in the world. You already know that."

"That isn't enough," said Ginny. She stared into his eyes, wishing desperately that the clear and open gaze of that other Draco she had so briefly seen would return. He _had_ to be in there somewhere!

_No. This can't be. And then he raised his wand-_

Draco blinked, and in that instant, Ginny knew that something had opened in him. But it had only happened for the blink of an eye. Then it had snapped shut. His eyes were like brilliant silver mirrors again.

"Everything would be open to you," he said. "Every opportunity. Your art could be placed in every gallery in the world, Weasley; you could move in any social circle."

"Are you mad?"

"No. I'd give you anything money can buy. I'm so bloody tired of seeing this rubbish on you." He flicked contemptuously at the material of her blouse and trousers. " I think you could benefit from closets filled to the brim with Balenciaga, Halston, Ungaro, Marc Jacobs… Gucci and Lauren handbags instead of that denim sack you haul around. And jewelry. I'd love to see you wearing nothing but canary diamonds from Boodles."

"Malfoy, if you think—"

"Of course I don't think that all of that is enough for you. I'm not half done, Weasley. A Muggle car, maybe? A Lamborghini Reventon, I think, in green, to set off your hair. How about a London penthouse flat? Something on Queen Anne Street? And a country cottage in Dorset."

"You're joking."

"I'm not. A yacht of your own, Weasley, an island in the South seas if you'd like that. Do you want your own art collection? Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Michelangelo? You can have it. You can have anything. All I want in return is you. Stay here, let me corrupt your innocence in the most delicious way you could ever imagine, and then, after that… we can do exactly as we like, wherever we like. I'll open a whole new world to you, Weasley."

"As your official Malfoy mistress," she said. The world was falling away from under her, bit by bit.

"If you want to think of it that way, yes."`

Her heart sank. Maybe she could say all of this calmly. _No- probably not._

"So what's your answer?" he asked her.

"It's very simple," said Ginny. "You've insulted me more than you could ever know, and I'm getting out of here. You think I'm nothing more than a—" _Oh, fuck, I'm just going to say it._ "Whore. There, I've said it, and if you want to go into hysterics, Malfoy, you're just going to have to do it. Only a whore would sign some sort of agreement to let you _fuck_ her so that you'd give her a load of cars and clothes and diamond necklaces. I don't want anything more to do with you, ever again." She pushed herself off the bed, savagely, with no desire to stay this time.

Draco's hand didn't grip her wrist very hard, but it was the tentative quality of his touch that made her turn round when she had been so sure she wouldn't do it for anything.

"Don't go," he said.

"Why not?"

"I was… wrong." His words were clipped and stiff and painful.

"Oh? Then why'd you say what you did, if you know that you were wrong?" she asked aggressively.

"Because you were going to Dean. Because I had… nothing else to offer you." He spoke as if each word cost him more than he could possibly afford to pay. "But I should not have said any of it. I should have known better. "

"You certainly should have done, Malfoy."

"Come back," he said quietly. "Please."

Ginny wasn't sure why, and much later on, she never would work out her reasons, no matter how long she spent thinking about it. But she did come back. She lay on her stomach on the bed, and after a while, she felt his hand stroking her hair.

"What else have you got, Malfoy?" she asked without looking up.

"Just… stay. " He gave a long sigh. "Weasley, just stay with me."

She rolled over on her side and propped herself up on one elbow. Draco looked incredibly tired, she thought. "So you want me to sign the standard mistress contract now, huh?"

"There's nothing to sign," said Draco. "You can have that letter of credit and anything else you like, of course. You can have everything I offered you and more. But I should've known that none of it would matter to you."

"Not really, no. I meant what I said, Malfoy. I was a tomboy, you know. I don't care very much about clothes and jewelry. Although I _would_ like a Rembrandt just over the kitchen sink…" Ginny caught herself. She knew what she had to ask now. "But what else did these contracts always include? I mean, I can pretty much guess what they expected from the women. What about from the men, though?"

"What do you mean?"

"I think you know," said Ginny. "Those Malfoy men were already married, right?"

"Er… yes, they were. Purebloods from the oldest families marry very young, Weasley, and we don't marry for love. We don't have that choice."

"So what did they do with their wives?"

Draco was silent.

"What did they _do_, Malfoy?"

"They lived separate lives," he finally said.

She was sinking. Even though she was still lying on the bed, she was sinking and falling through it, because her heart had turned to lead. She chose her words carefully, so that there could be no mistake about her question and his answer.

"Malfoy, let's say for the sake of argument that I do this. I stay in this room, I let you seduce me, you spend the next week preparing me, and then I let you take my virginity and I become the new Malfoy mistress. I would be safe, right? We could be together?"

"Yes. That's what I know now."

"But would you really be all mine? Would you let everyone in wizarding society _know_ that we're together now?" Ginny took a deep, deep breath. "Would you leave Astoria?"


	55. Draco's Answer

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers!

_Chapter 55_

_I will never be able to forget Draco's face_, thought Ginny during the long, long interval before he answered her. The planes of his jaw where the witchlight hit them from the side were exquisite. She itched to draw them. How could he look so completely masculine when he was so beautiful, too?

"I can't," he said.

"You mean that you won't."

His unforgettable face twisted painfully. "I mean that I _can't_."

"But the facts are still the same. You won't do it."

"No," he said. "I won't."

"Is that what all the other Malfoys said to all the other mistresses?"

His face tightened, and he backed away. She pulled his head to her until their noses almost touched.

"Tell me, Malfoy," she said.

"None of the other mistresses ever expected anything like that," he said between clenched teeth. Something sparked between their mouths. "But you don't know what I've given up. I told you that, Weasley. You don't know what I'll do, what I've done, for the ones that I—" His mouth twisted, as if in awful pain.

"The _ones_? What do you mean? Which 'ones'? Who are you talking about?"

A thought came to her then. _He didn't want to tell me. But he did. And I felt something —_ She leaned in suddenly and kissed him, feeling everything in her gather up towards the energy of that one kiss. She felt one thought fly from his mind to hers. That was all she could get from him, but she didn't even want to know more.

"'_Her and Weasley_'," said Ginny. That's what you were thinking, Malfoy; those were your exact words. And _her_ means Astoria. Doesn't it?"

Draco pressed his lips tightly together.

"Oh fuck, you're just going to say that you can't tell me. Never mind. We both know it's true. And you're not going to tell me what you did for her, any more than you're going to tell me what you've done for me. I suppose you've made some sort of arrangement for her too, the other half of the Malfoy mistress contract. Maybe you've even got her to agree with it. Well, I don't really care anymore." She shoved herself up.

"Weasley. Wait. Where are you going?"

"I don't want to play this game anymore," said Ginny, feeling around for her shoes by the side of the bed. She suddenly felt very tired.

"This left off being a game a long time ago. I'm not playing with you now," said Draco. "Come back to me."

Ginny didn't answer right away. She looked around the room, examining it carefully, and she remembered exactly what the corridor outside had looked like when they'd walked through it on their way in. She knew exactly where she had seen it before, and it hadn't only been when she had found Draco and Astoria here. She had run through these corridors and past these doors in May as Lucius Malfoy mocked her in a dream, telling her that he had warped Draco's heart, so that she would find no love there. She had found a very young Draco sitting on a bed in this room, crying, and she had held him and soothed all of his tears away. While she stood with Draco at the top of a tower on the Malfoy lands in another dream, only a few nights later, she had opened his heart, and she had found these rooms there. When she'd got lost in the _Bas-Blue_ gallery on the night of the eighth of June, this was where she'd ended up. She had thought she'd seen Draco there. She supposed now that she would never know what she'd really seen; in any case, he truly did not remember it. But he had been opening the door of this room, and he had tried to take her into it. She had heard the breaking of his heart when she refused to go. _No… I only thought I heard it. That was only my imagination. He doesn't have a heart to break_.

Ginny finally understood—or at least, she thought she did. It all depended on how deeply you went, and on what your intention was; on whether you opened doors, or shut them, on what you gave, and on what you took. This place could be a heart. Or it could be no more than a set of corridors and rooms in the most exclusive whorehouse in the wizarding world, all belonging to the Malfoys from time out of mind. Whether she had imagined the other Draco who she thought she'd seen that night, or not, she didn't know. But whatever he was, whoever he was, she knew that he wouldn't have made any sort of arrangement, or offered her any kind of contract. He would have simply been hers. He would have left Astoria for her. He would have run away with her and left everything else behind. He would have given her his heart. She didn't know if the real Draco, the one she was looking at, even had a heart to give. If he did, he wasn't offering it to her.

Ginny got off the bed and put on her shoes. Draco was saying something to her; she ignored him. He jumped up and tried to grab her; she avoided him by running towards the door. She swung it open. The doorway had become the portal. She stepped into it, and nothing that Draco did could touch her anymore. She stood there for a little while, feeling the tremendous forces swirling around her. He was yelling quite loudly now and holding his hand out to her, trying to pull her back. Something about _please_ and _oh please_ and _don't leave me_ and _come back_ and _don't go_ and _sweetheart_.

_He still can't call me Ginny,_ she thought rather objectively. "It's Weasley," she said.

"I'll call you anything you like!"

_But you won't_, she thought.

"I'm begging you. Weasley. You've driven me to that. See, see what you've done to me? You've made a Malfoy beg."

_Is he crying?_ Ginny cocked her head to see. The room was already starting to fade. _No. He isn't._

"Do you hear me? Are you even bothering to listen to me?" demanded Draco. He ran forward, or at least it looked like he was running even though he was standing still and so was she, and he grabbed her hand. His fingers were solid and firm and scorching hot, and her flesh throbbed traitorously, remembering what they had done to her that night, and the pleasure they had brought.

"I'll do anything," he said. "Anything at all."

"Anything?" She looked at him steadily. "Really? Then will you leave Astoria? Because if you will, I'll stay here. Just say you'll do it. Say you'll leave her." _Lie_, whispered a desperate, awful little voice in her chest, beating against her ribs with frantic wings. _I'd even believe a lie, yes, I think I would, maybe I would… not even a very good one, really… Malfoys are liars anyway, so can't you just lie?_

Draco's face twisted in agony. "I can't."

She stood in the doorway, only a short distance from him but retreating, retreating, leaving him at a thousand miles a minute even as she stood quite still. "Goodbye, Malfoy," she said. "If you're so determined to stay with Astoria, then she can have you. She can bloody well come to you in Azkaban as well, if you really do ever end up there. The two of you deserve each other."

Then she let go of his hand. The forces swirling round her pulled her away, into the connection portal, and she vanished like a dream at sunrise.

"It _is_ your stupid bloody fault we're here to begin with," said a surly male voice from the darkness.

"You just keep right on telling yourself that, darling," snapped a female voice in return. "Might as well; you've repeated it a good ten thousand times by now."

"_I'm_ supposed to be the bitchy one here," said another voice. "I'm very hurt. The two of you are jointly taking my crown away. My self-esteem is plummeting. I hope you're happy now."

"Shut it, Creevey," the other two voices said in unison.

_I've found them!_ Ginny realized. _And they're all right… they're together… but oh, shite, I don't have a good feeling about this…_ "I'm here," she tried to shout, but her own voice seemed to bounce back at her, as if she were standing behind a glass wall.

"I still think we ought to make a break for it," said Daphne. "It's really our only chance."

Dean snorted. "I should've known better than to ever expect anything better from you. It hasn't occurred to you that Ginny could still be wandering around down here, has it?"

"Ginny Weasley's got out of here by now, of course, because she's got good sense," Daphne said impatiently. "Unlike some people I could name."

Dean snorted. "You've got a point there, all right. If I had any sense, I never would have spoken to you again, Greengrass."

"I might say the same, Thomas."

"If we ever do manage to get out of here, which I'm starting to sincerely doubt, I hope that the two of you simply get a room. I lost patience with all the flirting about three and a half hours ago, approximately thirty seconds after we all ended up trapped together," said Colin.

"If you say one more word, Creevey, I'm leaving," said Daphne. She sounded perilously close to tears. "I'd rather take my chances with being caught by Potter ."

"I think you're right, whether Creevey can keep his mouth shut or not," said Dean, much more quietly. "Not about leaving—I'm not doing that—but about spreading out from here. We've got to find Ginny. We're certainly not doing it by hiding here, and if the Aurors haven't found us by now, I don't think they will."

"I do want to find her, you know," said Daphne. "She's—she's down here because of me. It's true. If she hadn't set Creevey onto following me, she never would have even thought of coming here."

Dean gave a long sigh. "Ginny does what she wants to do. I've tried to stop her many a time, but there comes a point when I can't save her from herself anymore. I suppose I can't really blame you, Greengrass."

"It's all very sweet that you're kissing and making up," said Colin, "but you're not really mad enough to start flouncing about the tunnels when we know perfectly well that the Aurors are prowling here, there, and everywhere, are you?"

Ginny gasped. _Oh, fuck!_

"We've got to find Ginny," said Dean. "I'll do anything I have to."

"What; do you think I don't care about her?" exclaimed Colin. "I care deeply and truly about Ginny! It's just that I'm well, a bit of a coward sometimes… I'm not entirely sure how I ended up in Gryffindor, really… but if determination alone were enough, I'd do anything to find her!" He threw out his arms dramatically. Ginny winced, because one of them seemed sure to hit her over the head. She tried to step back, but she seemed frozen in place; Colin's arm came closer and closer, and then the glass around her cracked into a thousand pieces, and she staggered out of it.

"Ouch," she said.

"See?" Colin exclaimed joyfully. "It worked."

"Where the hell have you been?" demanded Dean. "We've been trapped here for three bloody hours, Ginny, waiting for you! Harry and the Aurors are spread out all over the tunnels. I'm not even sure what they're looking for, but they don't seem to be able to find it; I keep hoping they'll give up and leave. We might have got out, but I wouldn't leave without you. What happened?"

"Uh—it's hard to explain," Ginny said guiltily.

Dean sniffed the air. "Is that chocolate I smell? Where did you get chocolate in the tunnels under St. Mungo's?"

"How about if I tell you a bit later on?" Was Daphne looking at her just a little too knowingly, Ginny wondered?

"Well, it doesn't matter now. Come on, let's get out of here! The way to the right should be clear; I'll show you exactly how to go so they can't possibly catch us. They certainly won't know these tunnels the way I do." Dean grabbed her arm, and they all began to tiptoe away.

"There! There she is. Told you she'd show up, sooner or later." A voice rang down the tunnel, distant but clear and triumphant. "Send him down now. Hurry. I'm not losing them."

"Potter," breathed Daphne. Her face was very white in the faint light. "But how did he suddenly know where we were?"

Ginny's stomach plummeted. _She_ knew.

"Because he's put a Trace on me," she said. _Because Malfoy was right. I shouldn't have come back here. I've put them all in danger_.

"They're sending an Auror down," said Dean. "Come on. There's no time to lose. And I don't want to hear a bloody word out of you, Creevey; just run!" He shoved Colin roughly ahead of him; Daphne followed them, and Ginny brought up the rear, her heart pounding, each beat a desperate tattoo.


	56. Surprise, Surprise

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers! HINT: Reviews are very INSPIRING.

_Chapter 56_

"Hey, who do you think they've sent—" said Colin.

"_Defero silens,"_ whispered Dean. _Are you trying to see how quickly you can get us caught, Creevey? Because you're going about it the right way,_ he loudly hissed, silently. Ginny had no idea how it was possible to pull off this particular trick, but Dean did manage it.

_I was—only wondering, _Colin silently panted as they ran.

_This spell has such odd effects, _thought Ginny.

_Yeah, I know,_ said Dean. _But it's the only way we can communicate without tipping all the Aurors off as to our exact location. Come on—this way-_

Ginny followed, cursing herself. Very, _very _silently. She'd forgotten how tricky this spell could really be. It was much too easy to accidentally turn thoughts into silent words, and nothing could have been more dangerous for her just then.

Left. Right. Left again. They were going down; Ginny could tell by the different feeling of the air. _We're getting close to that door where I saw Malfoy—oh, shite! Well, how am I supposed to keep myself from thinking about him? _But they all kept running, and nobody seemed to be recoiling or noiselessly screeching questions, so she'd obviously avoided putting her thoughts into words that the others could have heard. She breathed a silent sigh of relief.

_I don't care who they've got on our trail; nobody will ever find us here,_ said Dean after a few minutes. _I know a perfect place. Just a bit further. And quit whinging, Creevey. You could use a bit more exercise, in my opinion._

Ginny began to feel a bit of hope. She was pretty sure she knew the place that Dean was talking about, and it was very well hidden and large enough to conceal all of them. Maybe it really _would _be all right. Dean knew these tunnels so well; she couldn't imagine any Auror working at the Department of Mysteries who could possibly have half so much information about them. Even if Harry had put a Trace on her, it couldn't last forever; that sort of spell had a very limited span of concentrated power once it was actually activated. It had to run out soon, and they'd simply hide until it did.

_Here. Right here,_ said Dean, pulling Ginny into a large alcove. She was holding Daphne by her other hand, and she felt the other girl hesitating. _Whatever for?_ she wondered. _Daphne, come on!_ she said. _I've been here before; it's perfect, and it's safe. What are you waiting for?_

That was when she heard a noise. _Footsteps? Maybe? Or… no…_ She wasn't sure if that was what she'd heard to begin with, and the sound was very faint, almost inaudible, fading away quickly.

_What was that?_ she whispered to Daphne. Whispering was pointless, she supposed, seeing as how they were all speaking silently anyway, but she couldn't help it. _How on earth should I know?_ Daphne whispered back.

Nobody else seemed to have heard whatever the sound had actually been. Dean was busy crowding them all into the alcove, and he obviously hadn't noticed a thing, and Colin was complaining that _Tony _had never said anything about how he thought he needed more exercise. Ginny didn't know what to think.

_Everyone all right?_ asked Dean. _Then we'll wait it out, that's all. They'll never find us here. It's a bore, I know, but we'll get through it if we just stick together. Everything's going to be just fine. I promise it will. Just stay calm, and-_

Harry's voice carried beautifully all the way down the passages and tunnels. Ginny wondered numbly if he'd put some sort of _Sonorus _charm on it.

"She's there. The modified Tracking spell worked like a charm. That's funny, isn't it? Worked like a charm, I mean, when it is one… Zach, get down there and start searching. It might take a bit of time, but you'll find them."

_I never knew that Colin had freckles before, _Ginny thought rather objectively. _I think I can only see them because he's gone so dreadfully pale. Oh, I'm so glad that I didn't tell Luna anything. At least she hasn't been dragged into this nightmare. _

_Why aren't we running?_ squeaked Colin.

_Nowhere to run to,_ said Dean, his voice eerily calm. _And that would just make it worse, anyway._

Creev_ey, I really don't know what the Sorting Hat was thinking on the day it sent you to Gryffindor, _said Daphne.

_A Slytherin is insulting me,_ Colin said to Dean. _Aren't you going to defend the honor of our house?_

_Shut it,_ said Dean.

_I like that,_ said Colin. _Here we all are, facing our doom, and you're still telling me- _

_That's it._ _Shut your fucking mouth or I'll shut it for you!_ snarled Dean, grabbing Colin's shoulder and dragging him backwards, further into the alcove.

Zacharias Smith passed only a few yards away from where they were all crouched in the darkness, his wand out. "_Probatur,_" he said clearly. The air shimmered blue. "You're right, Potter," he called up the tunnel. "A Malfoy's been here, and I think that whoever it was, that Malfoy's still here."

_No. No. Oh, gods, no. _Ginny couldn't even try to keep from actually saying the words instead of only thinking them anymore; she couldn't even beat back the blind panic. Draco following her, Draco near her somewhere in the tunnels, looking for her, trying to find her, except that the Aurors would find him now. They would catch him. They would send him to Azkaban. _And even with everything we just did in that room at the Crystal Palace, I still don't know for sure if it was enough to get me in there. Without giving him my virginity, I just don't know if it was enough. _She could not stop that traitorous thought from darting through her head.

_Oh,_ Colin said faintly. _Sorry. I suppose you were only trying to save my life._

Dean ignored him and turned to Daphne. _I thought I heard someone following us, but I couldn't be sure. But I didn't imagine it, did I?_

_No,_ said Daphne. _You didn't imagine it at all._

_And you know who it is?_

_Yes,_ said Daphne.

It was harder to disguise your real feelings while speaking when the Silence spell was being used, Ginny knew. She could tell that Daphne hovered right at the edge of hysteria.

_But I can't help it,_ said Daphne. _There's nothing else I could've done. I had no choice. If I had to do it over again, I couldn't have done differently. I'm a pretty rotten excuse for a human being, aren't I?_

_Shut it, Greengrass,_ said Dean, and then something happened that made Ginny's mouth drop open in amazement.

Suddenly, swiftly, Daphne leaned her head on Dean's chest, as if it had grown too heavy for her to hold up anymore. He stiffened for a moment. Then he began to run his hand over her hair very gently. He tipped her head up and said something to her that Ginny couldn't hear. Her face was tearful, and his was tender.

_I do not believe what I'm seeing,_ muttered Ginny.

_What's to believe? It's young love,_ Colin sighed to her. _Maybe they've at least earned conjugal visits with each other in Azkaban, which is probably where we'll all going to end up at this rate._

_Oh, gods._ The pain was so sharp, so unexpected, that Ginny almost doubled over with the force of it.

Colin looked at her keenly, and then shook his head. _Well, if it helps take your mind off things at all, a little birdie told me that you had a remarkably good chance at a Ministry public art works contract. Of course, I don't necessarily know how much I'd give for your chances of getting it now, although I suppose it's the least of our problems._

_You mean that's actually true?_

_You've already heard about it from someone else? How? Do tell. Nobody else could have possibly known a thing._

_Draco Malfoy told me right after I caught him trying to break into St. Mungo's about, oh, three hundred yards from here. Yes, that'd go over well._ Ginny shifted from thoughts to silent speech. _Never mind who, but yes, I did hear something about it, she said._

_That's the main reason why I couldn't contact you for all that time!_ exclaimed Colin. _It was absolute torture, but it was more important than ever that there couldn't be the eentsiest weentiest bit of scandal that could possibly be traced back to you—not that it's made any difference in the end, but my intentions were good. Remember that screaming queen, __Sir Truman Sniffingsworth? The one you met at the Artist's Luncheon at __Madam Tippet's Terribly Twee Gallery and Lunchroom__ ?_

Ginny made a valiant effort to remember. It was rather difficult at the moment. _I think so. He had a dreadfully pasty face, he was wearing two wigs, one on top of the other, and he spent the entire lunch eating nothing but sugar cookies. He told me that he liked things that were boring and plastic, so I really didn't think that my art was going to fit in with what he was looking for. I didn't say that, of course. I just sort of kept nodding._

_Well, apparently he's made an exception for you and you alone, because he put in more than a few good words with the Senior Minister of Culture. He said something about the possibility that you might even be famous for longer than fifteen minutes. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds positive, doesn't it? You're on the shortest of short lists to redesign the Fountain of Magical Brethren. Actually, it's such a short list that I think it's only you. Although I'm afraid that the whole thing will be a bit queered by now, so to speak. It'll be rather difficult to design anything from Azkaban, or wherever we all end up-_

_Shut it, Colin!_ hissed Ginny.

_I do wish everyone would quit saying that,_ he complained. Then his eyes widened. _Oh, shite._

A group of Aurors clattered down the tunnel, Harry Potter at their head. He motioned for them all to stay where they were, grouped at the mouth of the passage, and he walked down to one side of the alcove, no more than a few yards from Ginny. He was turned in the opposite direction, and the alcove was too dark and secluded for him to see her as long as she remained in it, but discovery was only moments away. She realized that. Zacharias Smith was going to pull her out of there at any second. _Would it be better to just walk out? Maybe then they'd leave Colin and Daphne and Dean alone; they wouldn't even see them. I should try. _She began to get to her feet.

Zacharias Smith flicked his eyes back at her, and she slithered back onto the floor, unable to move a muscle. Dean caught her and propped her up from behind. She saw the look of astonishment on his face, and she was sure that her own would have matched it if she'd been able to manage any expression at all.

_He saw me; I know he did, and he didn't give me away!_

_Shh, Ginny,_ Dean replied.

Zacharias Smith stepped forward slightly, so that he was just to one side of the alcove. "I've got her, Potter," he said.

His hand reached out. Ginny watched it come closer and closer to the rock wall outside. It was nowhere near any of them.

"_Revelo,"_ he said, and a skinny arm materialized from thin air. A gold bracelet flashed, and perfectly manicured fingernails gleamed in the faint light. His fingers closed on the tanned wrist.

Harry appraised the figure who had been revealed by Smith's spell. A contemptuous grin spread over his face.

"So we've finally found you," he said. "Hello, Mrs. Malfoy."

In the alcove, Ginny heard Daphne give a silent sob beside her, and finally, everything fell into place.

Astoria's blond hair was straggling around her dirty face in stringy wisps, and her expensive clothes were filthy. "Tell Smith to let go of me," she spat.

"You've got a few questions to answer first," said Harry. "Come on. Let's get her out of here."

"Go ahead," said Zacharias Smith. "Personally, I'm going to stay behind in order to make sure that she didn't have any partners in crime still lurking about down here."

"I don't recall giving that order," said Harry.

"Neither do I, oddly enough. But if she did show enough foresight to bring any little helpers, don't you think it's rather a good idea to round them up instead of letting them get away?"

"You're overstepping yourself, Smith." Harry's voice was soft and menacing.

"So are you, Potter."

Harry's lips tightened. "If you want to get yourself lost down in these tunnels, that's your lookout, I suppose. I've got a prisoner to bring back to the Ministry. Let's go."

Zacharias Smith leaned against a rock wall, watching Harry and the other Aurors leave. He looked very amused, Ginny thought. Several minutes passed.

"You bloody idiots can come out of there now," he said, without turning round.

They all stared at each other, faces deathly pale.

"I know you've heard me. Out."

Awkwardly, Dean climbed out of the alcove, followed by Colin, Daphne, and Ginny, who tried to look anywhere but at the tall, blond Auror. Everyone else, she thought, was clearly doing the same.

"What's going to happen to my sister?" Daphne burst out.

Zach shrugged. "Nothing. They'll question her, but they don't have a shred of evidence, and Potter does still need at least that shred in order to actually _do _anything, thank all the gods. He hasn't turned into such a power-mad megalomaniac yet as all that. So they'll have to let her go. But you know at least a bit more about why she was really here, don't you, Greengrass? Come on, be honest with me. You certainly do owe me that much."

"The Malfoy money," Daphne whispered. "Astoria thought she could get her hands on it through St. Mungo's, but she didn't know how. All she knew was that Draco was trying to get in here, too, and that it had something to do with the money."

"Ah, yes," Zach said. "The money. And Potter can't prove that against her, any more than he's been able to prove it against Draco Malfoy, although it hasn't been for lack of trying. So the Ministry will have to let her go, and then she can have a nice bath, which she sorely needs after crawling round these tunnels for hours on end." He shook his head. "But, Greengrass, do you have any idea what sort of trouble you could have got yourself into simply by following her around?"

Daphne looked at him with wide eyes and said nothing. "We've got nothing else to discuss with you, Smith," said Dean, holding a protective arm round her.

"There it is again, that noble Gryffindor act we're all so familiar with," said Zach. "A bit surly though, aren't you, Thomas? You might keep in mind that I just saved all your arses from the Ministry."

"Sorry," muttered Dean. "I'm grateful, yeah."

"You don't sound very grateful to me." A sardonic smile hovered on Zach's lips. "Don't worry. I'm not going to turn you in, because it wouldn't amuse me. I'm not like And—oh, oops, we've all got to call him Sir Truman Sniffingsworth now; I keep forgetting. I only do things that amuse me. Anyway, Greengrass, I understand sisterly devotion. But do you really think she would have done the same for you?"

Daphne drew herself up. "I won't say another word about it to you, Smith."

Zach shook his head. "What an ungrateful lot you are. Out." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the tunnel leading upward. He held out a hand to stop Ginny when she walked by him at the end of the group, and she noticed that his fingers were all the same length. "Not you, Ginevra."

"You let her go," said Dean.

"Plenty of protectiveness to go round, I see, even though you've gone back to your old flame," said Zach. "She'll be all right, Thomas. Ginevra and I have some talking to do." His voice was casual, but his tone was as hard as the rocks under their feet. Dean, Colin, and Daphne slowly filed up the tunnel. They all cast worried looks back at Ginny, but they kept moving, and they finally disappeared.

_I've got a bad feeling about this,_ thought Ginny. "Uh, thank you for not giving us away to the other Aurors," she said awkwardly. "I'm not even sure how to—"

"Yes, it's obvious you never attended charm school, Ginevra, but never mind. I'll tell you how exactly you can show your infinite gratitude," said Zach.

_Oh, ugh. He'd better not mean what I hope he doesn't_, thought Ginny. _I mean, he's hardly bad-looking, but he sort of has all of Draco's worst qualities without any of the dead-sexiness… Fuck! I just thought of Malfoy as 'Draco' again. That's really got to stop. _

"Don't worry; I'm not talking about that. You can keep your knickers on as far as I'm concerned. But you've got to understand why I've done this. I certainly didn't lie for Malfoy's sake," said Zach. "And we don't need to go into the touchy subject of just which Malfoy I'm talking about, do we? Oh, don't get those chaste knickers in a twist, Ginevra; if I didn't turn you over to Potter, I'm not likely to tell the whole truth about who exactly was here, because that would get you into just as much trouble."

"What do you mean?" asked Ginny, feeling a cold chill run up her spine.

"Potter didn't put a trace on you, but on Astoria Malfoy. You know that by now. But hasn't it occurred to you to wonder why none of your brothers have shown up to blunder round and try to find you?"

"I didn't think they could get into the tunnels at all."

"That's not it. Percy has Ministry clearance, and George and Ron have found spells that mimic it very well. They're quite clever, I must say. But Potter's got a Block on you, Ginevra. He has done for several weeks; he set it when he popped in on your mum for tea, apparently." Zach gave a short, humorless laugh. "You were never his main target, but he wanted to be sure that if anything did happen, you'd be isolated from help. It was a bit of an insurance policy, you see."

_Shite!_ "And Dean got round it because he was following Colin, not me," whispered Ginny.

Zach nodded. "But you can't really tell me that any of this comes as a surprise to you, can you?"

"I suppose not," admitted Ginny. "If anything, I'm surprised that I _wasn't_ Harry main target all along."

"Yes, well, keep your nose clean, and you won't be," said Zach. "And we're rather straying from the point, which is that I didn't lie to save anyone else's skin, either—Greengrass, or Thomas, or Creevey- except to the extent that disaster befalling any of them would have put you off your game."

"What game?" asked Ginny.

"Now we're getting to the meat of the matter. I didn't really even lie for _you."_

"Then why—"

"I lied for the sake of what's in you, Ginevra Weasley," Zach said flatly. "I lied for the sake of that talent's that wandering through you like a caged spirit. You've got to come to terms with it, you know. You haven't done it yet. You shut it away because it frightens you, and then every once in a while, it erupts. That's at least an improvement over what you were doing before, but it's not enough. But if you were locked away in Azkaban, you couldn't have used it at all, and I won't allow that to happen. You're going to finish what you're working on now, it's going to be ready in five days, and you'll bring it to that art opening at my sister's gallery so that you can get that Ministry contract from the artist formerly known as—well, we've all got to call him Sir Truman Sniffingsworth now. And that's how you can show your fucking gratitude."

Ginny stood very still. Doors were opening up in her mind, and light was streaming through them, even in the darkness. Part of her wanted nothing more than to cower away from that painful brightness, but because she was a Gryffindor, and a Weasley, and above all herself, she did not allow herself to do it.

"Thank you," she murmured. "I think."

"Thank me by doing your damn art, Ginevra," said Zach. "It's what you're here for. Now get the hell out." He gave her a gentle push.

When she Apparated back to her studio, Daphne was sitting on the couch, pressing her hands together. Her dark eyes were enormous.

"I'm sorry," she said. It sounded like the beginning of a very long sentence.

Ginny looked at her, and all she could see was Astoria Malfoy's sister. "Please go away," she said.

"Astoria's an unholy bitch, she's barely spoken to me since the wedding, but she's my sister," said Daphne, speaking very rapidly, as if sure that Ginny would throw her out before she had a chance to finish anything she planned to say. "I thought I could get her out of there before Potter found her. I knew that she was planning to follow Draco there and try to get in… she found out that he was going there; we both did…"

"How did you find out?" Ginny asked sharply, in spite of herself.

"I've been following her and Draco Malfoy around Europe for four bloody months, picking up scraps of information wherever I could," said Daphne.

"So _that's_ what he's been doing? Just… traveling?" Ginny dropped onto the sofa.

"Nobody knows what he's been doing, but whatever it is, he's been on the move constantly, and my sister's been with him every step of the way. They're photographed together, although neither one of them ever looks the least bit happy. But it always looks… arranged. I don't believe that they're spending much time together, really. And I've been afraid for her." She looked directly at Ginny for the first time. "I've had dreams. It was all very vague, but Draco was talking to one of the Gringotts goblins, and he kept saying that he wanted her sent somewhere."

Ginny gasped.

"You've had them as well, haven't you?" asked Daphne.

"I can't do this," said Ginny. "I _can't._ Daphne, I won't get dragged into this again. I just don't want anything more to do with Draco Malfoy, ever again, and that's all there is to it. I mean, I can't blame you; no matter what I think of Astoria, I know she's still your sister, but it never came to anything, did it? She certainly didn't get sent anywhere, she came back here herself."

"She did," Daphne said quietly. "But she never would have done without Draco. And I never, ever thought that he would come back here. I want to understand why he did, and I've tried to make sense of it, but I still can't manage it."

"No more," said Ginny, shaking her head. "I can't listen to any more. I can't become involved anymore. I won't have anything more to do with any of this. I'm sorry, but I have to draw the line somewhere, and I'm doing it here and now."

"I wish I could do the same thing," said Daphne. She wanted to say something more. Ginny knew it. But whatever it was, she didn't want to hear it, and she knew that Daphne knew that, too.

"Please go now," she repeated, and Daphne nodded and left.

When she had gone, Ginny went to her art table and picked up a handful of charcoal pencils. She looked down and saw that her fingers were trembling over a new pad of cold-press paper. She closed her eyes and felt the journey begin. Then the volcano erupted through her hands and wiped everything else away, eclipsing pain and loss, and beauty rose from its ashes.

Next chapter: October 31st, 2001… ;) BTW, if you recognize the quotes from Sir Truman Sniffingsworth, as well as the trivia about his two wigs and his love of sugar cookies, you may be able to guess which recent historical figure in the art world he really is (or rather, was.)


	57. A LongAwaited Event

A/N: Thanks to all the readers and reviewers, especially QueenofNight.

_Chapter 57_

Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one.

~_Stella Adler_

_October 31, 2001_

Voices echoed from some misty distance. Very vaguely, they reached Ginny's ears. They seemed like the first outside sounds she had heard in a very long time.

"Well, here we are. Do you have your groveling act down pat yet?"

"One more word out of you, and you can just run off to rearrange Ginny's used pencil shavings, or whatever it is you do, art-assistant-boy. I could get in without you, but you couldn't do the same."

A superior sniff. "I'm a very important personal manager, I'll have you know. And you could get in, all right, but Gin would throw you out on your arse in a second if I weren't with you. So I'll thank you not to give me any attitude. Play nice, if you even know how."

A pause. "Sorry." The voice sounded very sad, Ginny thought, and rather defeated, as if all of its bravado had run out of it as easily as air from a balloon that had been pricked by a pin. "I don't mean to be a raving bitch, Creevey."

"It does rather come naturally, so I suppose you don't. Oh, don't get your knickers in a twist. I think it's meant as a compliment of sorts. There are times when Ginny could use a bit more of that. She goes back and forth so much, especially when it comes to… ah… a certain tall blond unmentionable who we probably shouldn't talk about out in the corridor..."

"You're not joking about that," said the female voice. "Really, I'll be lucky if she doesn't throw me out on my arse anyway."The door swung open.

"How _do_ you do that, Daph? _I_ can't get in, and I'm just about her dearest friend. Luna can't get in. Even her brothers can't get in, so it can't be a blood bond—"

"Trust me, Creevey. You don't want to know. And I've told you before, stop calling me 'Daph'! I ought to insist that you address me as 'Miss Greengrass.'"

"Oh? Is that what the entire Slytherin Quidditch team called you during sixth year at Hogwarts on that infamous night when—"

"That was Millicent Bulstrode; that wasn't me."

"Really? Greg Goyle still talks about it to this very day."

A sigh. "I suppose I deserve this. I'm taking it as a sort of penance, I hope you know. But I'll only admit it as long as you don't ever say a word where Dean Thomas can hear it!"

"I solemnly swear to be as silent as a thousand graves put together. Do dish, Daph."

"All right; it was Millicent Bulstrode _as well_. She helped with seconds; some of those Slyths were awfully…energetic, you know. She always was a good sort, Milly. But those days are behind me forever, Creevey."

Footsteps entered the room. A hard poke on the shoulder. It pulled her towards the surface even further. She stirred, and remembered how to form words. Sort of.

"Mm?" asked Ginny.

"Gin," a very familiar, very loud voice said in her ear. "It's your dear, dear bosom friend, Colin Creevey. Remember me? Ron and Luna said that you weren't answering your owls, and you weren't letting anybody in the door."

_Ron… Luna… oh, dear._ She hadn't owled either of them since returning to her studio… _how long ago was it now?_

"Don't worry; I've let them both know that you haven't dropped dead. You've been deep in the throes of art, haven't you?"

Daphne Greengrass raised an eyebrow. "That's a bit of a rhetorical question, isn't it?"

Colin studied the large sheets of Strathmore hot-press paper scattered all over the drafting table in the front room of Ginny's studio. Some were hanging over the edge, others had drifted across the room, and a large set were clipped to a clothesline which was strung all the way to the kitchen. "Is this your new series?" he asked.

Ginny's head popped out from beneath a sheet that was draped all the way to the wooden floor, creating a tent. "Mm-hm," she said abstractedly, drawing her way up the table.

"Are these the finished drawings?"

"Mm."

"Are you still stuck at that point where you can't communicate with the outside world at all?"

She shook her head. "Mm-mm."

"Oh, yes you are. You're still quite thoroughly stuck there. I can always tell."

Ginny looked up. There were smudges of pencil all over her nose, and her hair had come undone from a ribbon and was straggling down her back, a fine red nimbus surrounding her head like a halo in front. She clearly hadn't brushed it in days. Her eyes were so large that the pupils completely swallowed up the lighter golden-brown irises. "I don't know what you mean," she said.

"She's rather a high-maintenance friend to have, isn't she?" asked Daphne. Colin ignored her and studied the drawings strung on the clothesline. They were covered with writhing, spidery sketches of intricate figures hovering in clouds of light and darkness. They were simultaneously repelling and alluring, impossible to look away from.

"Shite, but these are good, Gin!" he murmured. "What's it called?"

"_Portals_," Ginny said absently. "I think I'm done with it."

"Well, that's a good thing," said Colin. "Considering that it's the thirty-first of October, and that the art show at the _Bas-Bleu_ gallery is in two hours."

Ginny blinked. She could feel the world around her coming into focus a bit. "But that's impossible. I just got here. I've only been working for a few minutes…" She looked round at the drawings. "No, I couldn't have possibly got all these done that fast… it's not really October thirty-first… is it?"

Daphne cleared her throat. "Yes. Yes, it is."

Ginny turned to face her, slowly. _Halloween. The day that Draco Malfoy wanted me to… and Astoria… he wouldn't leave Astoria… and she's Astoria's sister… and now she's back here again_.

"Gin, she's the only one who can get into this studio, and you know it perfectly well," Colin said quickly. "And what did I just say about your appalling neglect of friends and family? What else was I supposed to do?"

Ginny ignored him. "What do you have to say, Greengrass?" she asked.

Daphne looked rather pale, but she bent close to see the drawings. "You've certainly got it, Weasley. You've captured—well, I don't know quite what it is—but something that's attractive even though there's something about it that repels the viewer too. It's irresistible, like some sort of voluptuous nightmare."

Ginny nodded. "Yes. I think you've got it exactly. I don't know if anybody else could have described my art so well." She looked at Daphne appraisingly, and she didn't see Astoria anymore. "Please call me Ginny again."

"If you'll call me Daphne." The other girl smiled tremulously.

"While it's all very touching to see the beginning of a beautiful friendship, I'm sure," said Colin, "I'm not quite sure that either of you understood that when I said there were two hours until the art opening, I really did mean that there are literally two segments of _sixty minutes each_. In that amount of time, Ginny needs to be spectacularly or at least acceptably dressed, coiffed, and made up, and each one of these drawings needs to be delivered to the gallery, framed, and hung on the walls. Anyone mind telling me exactly how this miracle is going to occur?"

Daphne waved a dismissive hand at him. "What else is a good art-assistant-boy for?"

"_Ginny!_ Are you going to let this Slytherin raspberry tart stand there and get away with calling me—"

"Oh, just run along and flounce off in a huff, Colly," said Ginny. "Your face is turning red already."

As Colin followed her suggestion to the letter, levitating all of her art out of the studio with his wand on the way, she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the wall. "Oh, sweet goddess on a stick," she groaned. "Daphne, I can't do this. I cannot attend an art opening in two hours. I don't have anything to wear. I think there's a dirty bathrobe in the loo, and that's it."

"It's a hopeless case," the mirror agreed before falling into a swoon.

"I've really got to remember to replace all those annoying inanimate objects around here someday," Ginny said distractedly, patting at her hair as she tried to peer into the mirror, which was now flat on the floor.

"Come on," said Daphne with a grin, pulling Ginny up by the arm. "We've got some preparations to make."

"But I have to agree with the mirror," said Ginny, stumbling along behind Daphne. "It really is hopeless. Actually, I don't even think I have the dirty bathrobe. I cut it up to use as rags to smudge charcoal on one of the big drawings. Unless you can sew a dress together from paper bags, we're out of luck."

"I'm a Greengrass," said Daphne. "I never learned any skill as useful as sewing. But I do happen to have got my Miniaturization charms down pat, and personally, I think that if Samaritaine hasn't missed this by now… well, either they're not going to, or I really don't plan on returning to the Rue de Rivoli anytime soon. She pulled something very small from her purse. "I thought of you when I saw this, Ginny," she said softly. "I suppose I hoped that I'd see you again, and that I'd be able to give it to you. I've… well, I've missed you. I'm not very good with female friends, you know. You're probably the first I've ever had, really."

Ginny blinked back sudden tears.

"Now, before we start in getting soppy," Daphne said lightly, "let me show you what the Greengrass girls _are_ taught to excel at. Fashion, style, and hairdos. Oh, and I can give you a few bitchiness lessons as well. You really never know who you're going to meet at these art openings, so who knows—that might come in even more useful."

Ginny stood at the raised landing at the back of the gallery, looking down at the chattering crowd below, and she took a deep breath.

"Ready?" asked Daphne at her side.

"I think I am, actually," said Ginny. How much things had changed in the last four months, she thought. She felt a bit hesitant, a little nervous, but it was nothing compared to the abject terror that had gripped her in June and sent her fleeing to a side door.

"You're never going to get any readier," said Daphne. "And I hope you realize what a sacrifice I've made tonight; it goes completely against the Greengrass code. _Just_ for you, I've made myself look like a hag, while you get to be the goddess."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "You're hardly a hag, Daphne. I doubt that hags usually go around in slinky black Valentino numbers."

"But you're the one who will shine. I'm having to suppress all of my bitch genes in order to not stuff you into that utility closet and leave you there until the end of the night." Daphne pointed at a door behind them both.

"I don't think it's a utility closet. It's probably some sort of green room for dreadfully important art patrons to sit in while they try to decide whether they're going to spend obscene amounts of money on a painting."

"See? I ought to get even more credit for not doing it. You'd be perfectly comfortable all night long. Wait—your hair's coming down here. " Daphne fluffed one of Ginny's curls so that it spilled artfully from the chignon arranged on top of her head. "And fix your lipstick." She held her wand up and flared it into a long rectangle.

Ginny applied peach stain to her lips from a small bronze clutch she was carrying, and she stared at her reflection in the makeshift mirror. "I hope that French boutique never catches you, Daph. I really, really don't want to give up this dress." The silky oyster-colored material shimmered against her pale arms and showed off her neck and shoulders, falling in drapes to below her knees. Daphne had even lent her a diamond and gold cuff bracelet, although she was pretty sure that was fake. _It has to be fake… doesn't it? Oh, they're not going to come all the way from Paris to arrest her for shoplifting. I hope._

Daphne snapped up her wand. "Oh, they won't. You're gorgeous, Gin. Don't worry about a thing. The straight men will want to shag you, and everyone else will die of jealousy. And then there's the art. People might even notice the art."

"I'm still nervous, now that I actually have a ghost of a chance of getting that Ministry contract I keep hearing about," Ginny admitted.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better," said Daphne, "just imagine everyone you meet tonight taking a pee." Her voice shook a bit.

"You're nervous as well, aren't you?" asked Ginny.

Daphne nodded tersely.

"Have you heard what's happened with… well, you know… _her_?"

"I haven't heard a thing about my sister."

Ginny bit her lip, feeling rather torn. "I'm sure it'll be all right. Zach did say that the Ministry wouldn't be able to prove anything against her, you know. They've got to let her go."

"Yes, I'm trying to console myself with the image of Asta being released into wizarding London so that she can cause even more trouble," said Daphne.

Ginny squeezed her hand. "Let's both just spend the whole evening imagining everyone peeing, all right?"

But maybe that hadn't been the best image in the world, Ginny couldn't help thinking, because it made it very hard not to snicker uncontrollably as they descended into the party, arm in arm.

"_Dar-_ling! You're too, too, _too_ for words! Where_ever_ did you get that dress? I've been pestering Burberry to send me samples for _ages_, but they simply _refuse_," shrieked the Baroness Veronica van de Vere, enfolding Ginny in a hug as soon as she stepped into the gallery. Ginny tried her valiant best not to recoil from the overpowering mingled waves of _Youth Dew_, inadequately cleaned ermine, and Dom Perignon, of which there was apparently none left, because it had all been long since drunk by the engaging old fraud in her arms. Whether her title was genuine, fake, or received by owl in exchange for cereal box-tops, the Baroness was a very important art patron, after all.

"Darling, this exhibition is drop-dead stunning. Your best yet, by far. Too smashing for words. No, I haven't seen it yet. But that's what everyone is saying. You simply must drop round for tea next week!"

Ginny tried not to wince, but she couldn't help thinking that she might never be able to hear anything at all again in that particular ear. The Baroness was also completely deaf, and steadfastly refused to wear a hearing aid.

"Ginny, darling, have you met my dearest friend in _all_ the world, Sir Goiter von Goillingsworthy?" the Baroness went on. "No? Well, I've only known him for twenty-four hours myself, so I suppose not. You two simply _must_ meet, and that's all there is to it." She gestured grandly down at a very small, toadlike man blinking up at Ginny from the floor in an owlish way.

"Your art's much better than I thought it would be," he said, by way of introduction. "Most art openings these days feature drawings that might _call_ themselves drawings, but that's not drawing, that's just scribbling."

"Er… thank you," said Ginny, feeling rather at a loss for words. The press of the crowd around them was beginning to feel rather overwhelming.

"I think I'll give you a good writeup in my column next week in _Art Quasihourly_," mused Sir Goiter von Goillingsworthy. "But I'll have to take some time over it. Otherwise, that's not writing; that's just typing."

"Um, I'm sure it is," said Ginny, eyeing the room for possible exits. What had happened to Daphne?

"You might visit the refreshment table," said the little man. "Be sure to try the boar salami pithiviers. Otherwise, that's not eating; that's just snacking."

"Yes, yes, I will," said Ginny, craning her head to try to see above a group of elaborately bored-looking boys who kept snatching food from the table and hiding it in their backpacks when they thought nobody was looking. _Is Dean here? I hope he was invited. I just didn't even think of it. That could certainly be where Daphne went._

"And you really should visit the lavatories here. They're so elegant. Otherwise, that's not peeing, that's just—"

"Oh, look!" Ginny exclaimed loudly, pointing a finger. "Over there! The editor of 'The Journal of Unbearably Pretentious Concept Art'!"

A general stampede in that direction ensued, and Ginny's entire side of the room suddenly cleared out, at least for the moment. She breathed a sigh of temporary relief.

"It exists, you know," said a rather vague voice.

Ginny blinked. "What?"

"_The Journal of Unbearably Pretentious Concept Art_. The pages are all blank, except for advertisements. I like reading it." A tall figure drifted out from behind the refreshment table, looking very much as if he had arrived there as the result of a complete accident. His pasty face looked very white against a black suit, and he wore two wigs, one of top of the other. The effect was so ridiculously artificial that Ginny remembered she'd assumed it _had_ to be his natural hair, because nobody in their right mind would look that way on purpose.

"I do love things that are boring, you see," he said, munching on a cookie. "You ought to try these. They're very good."

_Cookies… eating sugar cookies… that's what he was doing the last time I met him, too._ And then Ginny remembered that she _had_ met him before. _But where? And why can't I quite seem to figure it out_? She frowned.

"You shouldn't frown like that," he said, taking another cookie. "Although I suppose that in the wizarding world, it doesn't matter. There are ever so many Plastic Surgery charms, but people don't use them as much as they should… the wizarding world's only got one problem with it, really. It's not plastic enough. That's why I love Los Angeles. I adore Hollywood. Have you been?"

"Uh… no, I've never been to America at all," said Ginny.

"You should go. California's beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic," he said, finishing the second cookie.

"That's nice," said Ginny. "Uh… I'm sorry, Mr…? I know we've met, but I just can't seem to remember."

The man smiled. He looked rather amused, Ginny thought. "That does seem to happen every so often these days," he said. "I'm supposed to be Sir Truman Sniffingsworth."

_What an odd way to put it, thought Ginny. But then, everything about him seems to be quite odd._ "Sir Sniffingsworth, of course!" she exclaimed. "I just don't understand why I can't seem to remember."

"I do," said Sir Sniffingsworth. "But we'll let that go for now. How do you like the party?"

"I've hardly had a chance to see much of anything yet," said Ginny. "But I'm sure it's very nice. What do you think of it?"

"Oh, I like any sort of party. I live for parties." He rummaged on the table for more cookies. "Maybe it's a good thing that everyone's gone. They've left all the desserts… Anyway, I have to go out every night. I have Social Disease, you might say. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs."

"That's very sad," said Ginny. She groped for something more interesting to say. Sir Truman Sniffingsworth might be one of the more bizarre people she had ever met, but she had to impress him. "So what do you think of my art?" She waved her hand at the walls.

"I think that it's not very boring," said Sir Sniffingsworth, dredging up a pink-frosted cookie. "What do you think?"

Ginny's heart sank. She walked round to the walls, looking carefully at her framed art as if seeing it for the first time. _Actually_, she thought, _I am._ She never saw art while she was creating it.

"I agree," she said. "But I'm not going to apologize."

"Good," said Sir Sniffingsworth. "Things don't always need to be boring, you know." He gave her an unexpectedly sweet smile.

_I know who he is,_ she thought. _Or I ought to know. I've read books about him. I've studied him in art class. But that doesn't make any sense. I saw him for the first time three weeks ago during that absolutely dreadful lunch_.

"Oh, look, they're coming back," he said, pointing at the black-clad figures pouring back into the main gallery. "The editor of _The Journal of Unbearably Pretentious Concept Art_ really was there, you know. But he never has much to say."

Zenobia sidled up next to them. She had an odd smile on her face, Ginny thought. One of her mother's sayings came to mind. _The Kneazle that ate the canary. That's what she looks like._

"Congratulations," she said to Ginny. "It's the best work you've done yet. _Portals,_ you've decided to call this series?"

Ginny nodded.

"Any particular reason?"

There was definitely an amused gleam in Zenobia Smith's eyes, Ginny decided. "The title just seemed to fit," she said evasively.

"It's appropriate," Zenobia said. "Halloween night is a portal between the old and new, when the veil between the worlds wears thin."

"Personally, I thought that it was the perfect time for my reintroduction to the wizarding world," said Sir Sniffingsworth.

"Ah, yes. Sir T_ruman Sniffingsworth_." She laid unusual stress on the name.

"It's awful. I suppose I have to keep it though, because I'll still be running into Muggles all the time. Do you think everyone will still like me with that awful name?"

"I'm sure they'll like you just as much as they did before."

"That's good. I think that everybody should like everybody," said Sir Sniffingsworth, taking yet another cookie. Zenobia slapped his hand.

"Really! You ought to be ashamed. How many cookies does that make for the night!"

"Oh, two dozen or so. I know. I'm sure my skin would clear up if I didn't eat quite so many. Do you suppose it's time to make the announcement?"

"There'll never be a better time."

"Send Sir von Goiter-on-his-neck or whatever he's calling himself now to the green room then, to get them." He cleared his throat.

"Hush, everyone!" he called loudly. "Shush, shush. Gossip later, listen now. Don't make me use that _Sonny-Bono_ charm or whatever it's called. I'm sure I don't remember it anyway. I got my Copacabana School of Magical Arts Letter, but I never went, so there are ever so many spells I didn't learn. As I'm sure you all know, we're here because of the lovely Ginevra Weasley—she has a beautiful dress, doesn't she?" He put his arm on her back. "I'm sure it will be even more lovely when it's mass-produced, because the original is never as good as the copies. Anyway, I'm happy to announce that the Senior Minister of Art at the Ministry of Magic has approved her contract to sculpt all the statues for the new Fountain of Magical Brethren. Isn't that just fabulous?" He turned to her, beaming. "Isn't this just the most wonderful night of your entire life?"

"I—oh- _yes!_ Yes, it is," gasped Ginny. Pure, clear happiness seemed to pour over her, as fresh and clean and unspoiled as sunlight. Her heart soared. She looked out over smiling faces; she heard the sound of applause, and one thought pulsed in her mind, over and over again, as sure and strong as a heartbeat. _At last. It's over. I've risen above it all. I've triumphed. From now on, my art with overcome everything._ Oh, the glorious work that lay ahead of her at that moment, the struggle, the obstacles, and the victories! It was hers now, all hers. And the best part of all was that she never needed to think about Draco Malfoy again. He was a part of her past now. Discarded. Left behind. No matter what it was that had actually happened to him, it didn't matter; it couldn't, she wouldn't let it. Ginny Weasley had work to do.

She turned back towards Sir Sniffingsworth, her face radiant with joy. But he was gone. Where he'd stood, she saw the top of a toad-like little man's head.

"I'm not your errand-boy, you know," he said resentfully. "I was a published author, not that _you'd_ understand anything about that sort of thing."

"Apparently you've never read my diaries," said Sir Sniffingsworth. "Just bring him through, won't you?"

"Yes, yes, I know, he's just your sort; you still do love your Eurotrash, don't you? Well, you might end up cultured yet, even in the afterlife. Perhaps someday someone will read one of my books to you." Sir von Goillingsworthy seemed to be ushering someone forward from the shadows, saw Ginny.

"_In Cold Blood_ has been made into a TV-movie or something, hasn't it?" asked Sir Sniffingsworth. "Well, then. Just send me a videotape. There's a good boy. Now run along."

Even before Sir Sniffingsworth took the someone's hand and pulled him forward, into the light, presenting him like an artwork at auction on the dais for the crowd, Ginny knew. Even before she heard the gasp, followed by a hush, followed by a frantic storm of whispering, she knew. Even before she saw the someone's heartbreakingly beautiful face, she knew. Because while he was still standing in darkness, she had smelled chocolate. And by then, it was too late.

"And I'd also simply love to announce that Draco Malfoy has been appointed the new Junior Minister of Culture. He and Ginny Weasley will be working closely together on the fountain statues for the next several weeks." Sir Sniffingsworth swept an arm over them both. "Won't that be lovely? Why don't the two of you shake hands for the photographers now?"

_Loads of reasons! Millions! Billions! Infinity plus one!_ Ginny opened her mouth to screech the words, and then winced as Draco stepped on her feet.

"Shut it, Weasley," he murmured out of one side of his mouth. "And smile prettily for the picture, can't you?"

When she stood frozen in place, he grabbed her hand and pumped it hard, turning his head and showing all of his brilliantly white teeth in a grin. Ginny felt the imprint of each of his fingers in her palm. She remembered what he had done to her with every one of them. Separately. Individually. Working in pairs, in threes, as a group…

She was holding his hand too long. In front of the entire wizarding art world. She realized it immediately. Sir Sniffingsworth in particular was looking at them very curiously. She dropped Draco's hand as if it were red-hot, which was, in fact, exactly how it felt, and the moment ended somehow.

"Sorry," Sir Sniffingsworth said apologetically as she turned back to the buffet table to hide her face. "But I do like to watch. It's always been a pastime of mine. And goodness, but Draco is worth watching, isn't he?"

Ginny didn't think she could pull off a lie, at that moment, because she was trying too hard not to cry. She bent her head. She felt a finger lifting her chin up.

"It'll be all right, you know," Sir Sniffingsworth said gently.

"It won't," said Ginny, her voice trembling. "You don't understand. We can't- _I_ can't—it's just not going to work. We cannot do art together."

"Oh, yes you can." He beckoned her to the end of the table and behind it, where nobody else was standing. Ginny realized that he didn't want anyone else to hear what he was about to say to her. "Everyone has their fifteen minutes of fame, you know. But Ginny, you're going to get more than fifteen minutes. So will Draco Malfoy. And together, you'll create something quite special. Can't you trust me when it comes to this? I _do_ have rather a good track record for picking out people who are going to do something important, you know—something that lasts."

"As Sir Truman Sniffingsworth? No. I've never heard of you." Ginny looked at him hard. "Who are you, really?"

In answer, he tapped her on the head with his wand. "I really do hope I've remembered how to do this correctly. Let's see… _Disillusion-_ something-or-other." Ginny felt a cold, shimmering sensation spread down her back.

"I _think_ it worked," Andy Warhol said thoughtfully, tapping his chin.

"Oh my goodness." Ginny's eyes widened. "Yes, it did. I do know who you are, uh—"

"Just call me Andy. All of my friends do. I hope we'll be friends."

"Uh, of course I'd like to be friends, um, Andy, but can I just ask you how on earth you ended up in an art gallery in wizarding London?" asked Ginny, feeling very much as if somebody had taken her brain out of her head, shaken it violently, and stuffed it back in through one of her ears. "Aren't you, um… I mean…"

"I shuffled off this mortal coil in 1987," said Andy."Really, dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details."

"So you're a ghost?" Ginny's brow wrinkled.

"You're doing it again." He gently smoothed away the line on her forehead with a finger. "Yes, I'm a ghost."

"But I don't understand. I just felt you touch me. I saw you eat cookies. You're walking about. I've never seen a ghost do any of these things."

"It's a very long, tedious story, and I have a very short attention span," said Andy. "But suffice it to say that there are ghosts, and then there are ghosts. Some wizards are permitted to come back in a more solid form if they had some sort of special talent or ability, or some compelling reason to return, or some such thing. That's what happened to me. Goodness, I could even have sex if I liked, except that I was never much into that sort of thing."

Ginny nodded. She was suddenly reminded of the main point at hand. "I'm so glad that things turned out for you like that, Andy. You're one of the great artists of the twentieth century, and it's wonderful that we'll all get to enjoy your work for an eternity now, but, er… could we maybe get back to what I was talking about before? This idea just isn't going to work. Um…Draco Malfoy and I had a close relationship. An _extremely_ close relationship," she emphasized. "That'll make it quite difficult to work together, don't you think?"

Andy cocked his head to one side, rather like a demented parrot. "I think I have the perfect solution to your problem, Ginny. Do you have a television set in your flat?"

"Well, yes, but what does that have to do with anything?"

"I think you ought to watch more of it and the problem will go away. When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships."

_Oh, what the fuck! I'll just tell him. I might as well._"I almost had sex with Malfoy!" she burst out. "That's why I don't want to work with the bastard. I'll just be thinking about it all the time."

Andy smiled beatifically. "The most exciting thing is not doing it, you know. If you fall in love with someone and never do it, it's much more exciting."

"Draco Malfoy and I are _not_ in love! And never doing it doesn't sound very bloody exciting to me."

"Hmm. In that case, you really do have a problem."

"So I won't have to work with him?" Ginny asked hopefully.

"Oh, no. You still will. I think it'll make for more interesting art."

"It'll be more interesting, all right! Right about the time I hex his balls off."

"I'm sure you won't. They'll probably come in very useful. I imagine that both of you are a _bit_ more interested in actual sex than I am, you see."

"Oh—ooh—" Ginny spluttered.

"I think I'll see if there are any sugar cookies left now. They're so good. Especially the pink-frosted ones. And I mustn't let Truman Capote get any of them—oops, Sir Goitery von Goiterish—well, I can't ever remember that name, so you might as well know that he worked out the same sort of thing. The wizarding world's awfully convenient sometimes, isn't it?" Andy drifted back to the table, adjusting one of his wigs.

_This can't get any worse,_ thought Ginny. _It just can't. Can it? I mean, I've already been told that the greatest artistic commission of my life has been utterly ruined by the fact that I have to work with Draco Malfoy during every minute of it._ She sniffed. _Why am I smelling chocolate? All I see in front of me is boar salami pithivers and mango cake with reduced balsamic vinaigrette._

And then she knew exactly why. The maddening blond in question was sidling up behind her, so close that she could feel the disturbing warmth of his body.

"What the hell do you want?" she hissed. _Damn Daphne for making me wear this dress!_

"Have you tried the boar salami pithivers yet, Weasley?" he asked. "I could make you a plate."

She hadn't tried them yet. But she could certainly see the platter, and there was a very large uncut boar salami right in the middle of it. She grabbed it and pulled it over to them, whacking it down on a plate.

"No need, Malfoy," she said, giving him her best radiant smile. "Just get me a knife. I'll cut you a nice big piece."


	58. Astoria's Return

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers!

_Chapter 58_

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

- _Harriet Beecher Stowe_

Ginny expected Draco to give her some sort of sarcastic answer, but he didn't say a word. Instead, he simply took the plate from her fingers, so deftly that she wasn't even sure how he managed to do it.

"That was my plate," hissed Ginny. "Give it back."

He touched her hand. "Come to the other side of the table with me, Weasley," he said out of one side of his mouth. "You can get it back over there."

"Fine, keep the plate," she said through clenched teeth. "I'm not going anywhere with you! I just want you to go away and leave me alone."

"No," he said.

She was still holding one side of the plate, and he grasped the other. Their fingertips met in the middle. Ginny felt a slow burn beginning under her most sensitive skin.

"Listen to me," said Draco, not taking his eyes off her for a moment. "Sir Sniffingsworth is holding court over there—yes, yes, I know who he really is, but we're supposed to keep up the pretense- and nobody's watching us for the moment, but we'll have to be quick, we haven't got long. Weasley, it's almost midnight." He pointed up to a clock on the wall. "You don't know what that means, and I can't explain it to you now, but this is more important than you can imagine. Come with me to the back room, for gods' sake."

The Baroness van de Vere waved at her from the circle surrounding Andy Warhol, crooking a finger. "Malfoy, you arrogant arsehole," Ginny muttered under her breath, smiling and waving back, shaking her head. "Are you seriously deluded enough to think that I'm going to run off and shag you in a broom closet, just because you originally asked me to fuck you tonight? Well, my answer's the same as it was five bloody days ago. I want nothing to do with you, ever again. Or I suppose you're going to tell me now that you don't remember anything that happened in the Crystal Palace?"

"I remember," he said. His voice was very quiet. It shook slightly. He put his hand on her wrist. It was trembling. _He's afraid of something_, she realized incredulously. If Draco Malfoy was afraid of anything at all, the world was clearly about to end. "Weasley, it's not what you think," he went on. "I swear that it's not. I only want to talk to you. We've got to talk."

Why wasn't he smirking at her, or deliberately stirring up her temper, or saying snarky things that made her boil with rage, she thought hopelessly. She could have exploded at him then. She would have been thoroughly safe from him. "I don't have to talk to you until we're forced together for weeks on end to plan the fountain statues, when I'll probably kill you. I might spend the rest of my life in Azkaban then, but it'll be worth it. Now go away, Malfoy," repeated Ginny.

"I can't," said Draco.

"Oh, yes you can."

"Weasley," he said, softly, urgently. "Listen to me."

There was no reason why she should listen to him. No reason why she should even keep standing next to him. But she did, and she let her arm fall, putting the plate back on the table. Ginny kept standing there, and she knew that she was going to listen to whatever it was he had to say to her. Later on, there were many nights when she would wake from dreams of what he might have said to her, but she never remembered what they were.

He took a single breath. She leaned closer.

"Ginny!" hissed a voice. She glanced up and saw Daphne's agonized face.

"I—tried," panted Daphne. "I couldn't hold her back—"

There was a whispering in the air, a murmuring, and Ginny realized too late that it had been going on for a long time. It had reached a crescendo. The crowd in front of the raised dais had parted, and a woman in a droopy, unflattering green dress stepped up the stairs, her heels clattering. Then she smiled, showing horsey teeth.

"Draco, _darling_, said Astoria Malfoy. "Whatever happened to my invitation?"

Ginny suddenly realized that she, Draco, and Astoria were standing so that the center of attention for the entire room was focused precisely on them. Astoria had even stopped so that a spotlight in the ceiling fell right on her dishwater-blond hair.

"I'm sure that I was meant to get one," Astoria went on. "It must have been no more than an unfortunate oversight." She glanced at Zenobia Smith, who was standing against the wall as if frozen into place. "After all, nobody could be so remiss as to fail to send Draco Malfoy's wife an invitation to the Bas-Bleu All Hallows' Eve art opening. That would be a social breach of the highest order. Only a mistake, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Zenobia said woodenly. "A mistake."

"Yes, you'd know that better than anyone else, wouldn't you," purred Astoria. "How lucky it is that I learned about it in time to show up at my loving husband's side."

One glance at Draco was enough to tell Ginny that he didn't look very loving to her. In fact, if looks could kill, she thought, Astoria would have left the gallery in a coffin. _Tell her to get out_! Ginny silently screamed. _Refuse her! Reject her!_

But Draco did nothing at all as the blonde woman flounced up the steps. Ginny felt bony hands pushing her aside. Then somehow smaller, cooler ones were pulling her back, and she saw Daphne's anxious face above her even as her sister stood at Draco's side, a triumphant smirk on her thin, pink lips.

_That smirk._ That was what did it, Ginny later decided. She was going to make a horrible, hideous, no-good, awful, very bad scene; she knew it quite calmly. Things would be thrown at Astoria's head, and then the smirk would be gone. A lot of different punches would be involved, too. Dull blonde hair would be ripped out by the roots, ending up all over the dais. And it would all be done by hand. She wouldn't need magic at all.

But someone was holding her back. Ginny struggled to get away; rage was flooding through her, nothing would stop her; Astoria had her hand possessively on Draco's arm now and that was a sight that could _not_ continue to exist under _any_ circumstances, and—

"I don't think that's a good idea at all, you know," a voice was saying, and huge, calm blue eyes were looking into hers. "Attacking someone at a public art exhibition might be considered a misdemeanor at least. Maybe a felony. It would all depend on how many bones you'd break, and it does look as if you're considering breaking quite a few."

_Oh, no. Luna! And I wasn't going to drag her into this at all. I'll get her into loads of trouble, and oh… Daphne, too, and… I can't do it now. I just can't. _ Ginny collapsed into Luna's arms like a deflated balloon. Now Daphne was helping to lead her behind the buffet table, and she was walking around the edge of the crowd.

"Ginny," she said urgently. "Come on. Hurry up. Maybe there's still time. Stay calm, and for Circe's sake don't _attack_ her, because that'll ruin everything. But you've got to get him away from her. I mean, he's got to choose you, and reject her. Hurry!"

And she was hurrying, but then a clot of art students stepped right in front of them and began discussing the _Portals_ series in relation to post-post-post-modern substrata of Fritatta art, or something along those lines, Ginny just wasn't sure, and they kept adding posts and lintels until her head spun, and no matter how hard she tried she just couldn't get through them.

"But what about the the collapse of discourse inT-shirt Libertarianism and Derridaist Derrida-concepts?" demanded one of them, wearing enormous owlish black glasses and standing in front of her, arms folded.

"I don't know and I don't care!" snapped Ginny, trying desperately to see over his head.

"If subtextual pretextual theory holds, we have to choose between Derridaist Derrida-concepts and submaterialist dialectic about that?" asked a girl in a black miniskirt, braids, and a cutoff T-shirt reading _Save the Environment—Kill Yourself_ before blowing an enormous bubble of pink gum and popping it.

Ginny could just see the top of Astoria's head now. She was moving purposefully towards the exit with Draco. He was apparently digging in his heels and refusing to go.

"Ha! However, Lyotard's essay on subcultural vandalism holds that culture serves to entrench outdated perceptions of culture, given that truth is interchangeable with sexuality. Suck on that for awhile, you subpostquasihemidemisemicapl italist running dogs!" pouted a spiky-haired pretty-boy clad entirely in a strategically placed hot pink zigzag of duct tape.

Andy Warhol had stepped in front of Astoria as she headed out the door. "I don't think you really ought to be going just yet. I've been saying all night long that this party isn't nearly boring and plastic enough, you know. And now _you've_ shown up. You'll make up for it in five minutes all by yourself."

Astoria laughed. It was an exceptionally irritating sound. "Darling, you haven't done anything worthwhile since… what year was it again? 1967?"

"You know, as much as I hate to admit that Truman Capote's ever right about anything, I'm normally very, very fond of Eurotrash," he said. "But in your case, I'll make an exception."

"Step aside, you mincing artist _manqué_," said Astoria. "It's nearly midnight on All Hallows Eve. You rather foolishly chose to spend your entire life among Muggles, but you're still a wizard. So if you don't know what that means, well, you should."

_Why should he? I don't even know what she's talking about,_ thought Ginny. She struggled to piece it together. All Hallows Eve… midnight… that was powerful magic, old magic, but not the kind that was taught at Hogwarts. She probably should know more, but she'd never really had the chance to learn. _It's Dark magic. I'd bet anything._

Daphne gasped. One of the art students was now whining something about a neocapitalist paradigm of concensus to deconstruct capitalism, but she shoved him aside, and he went flying.

The clock began to strike the hour. _One. Two. Three._

"Run! Run!" hissed Daphne, shoving Ginny along. _Four. Five. Six._

But she wasn't going to make it in time. She realized that at once. And she knew that Astoria did, too. _Seven. Eight. Nine._ The triumphant smile widened on the blonde woman's pink lips. _Ten. Eleven…_

_Twelve._

"Come along, darling," said Astoria. Then she left through the back door, Draco in tow. He looked down and away from Ginny, and all she could think of was the way he had looked when Filch had dragged him into Slughorn's Christmas party halfway through his sixth year. Down, and away from her, unable to meet her eyes.

But the art opening was still a triumph. Everyone said so. Ginny accepted everyone's congratulations, and smiled until she thought her face was going to crack, and shook hands until hers went limp, and hugged until she was sure everyone could tell her heart was sinking right through her shoes. Something awful had happened. She knew it, even though she didn't know what. But every time Daphne's eyes met hers, Ginny knew that _she_ knew.

Finally, incredibly, the party was over. The front door was open, and a number of taxis were lined up at the curb. Ginny saw Andy Warhol talking to Luna as he stepped into one. "Well, I never spoke to Bob Dylan after 1965 while he was alive, so I don't see why I should bother to do it in the afterlife," Andy was saying. "I've never forgiven him for stealing Edie Sedgwick away, you know. We never did finish that last film, and she hurt my feelings horribly by leaving. I was very fond of her, but she changed completely by the end."

"That's very sad," said Luna. "People do that sometimes. That's what Harry Potter did as well."

"So you know what it's like." Andy studied her critically. "Luna. It's a good name for you. You do look so very much like Edie. But you're more moonlike in appearance. You'll have to star in some of my new films. Come round to my new Factory, all right?"

"I'd like that very much," said Luna. "But I've got to help my friend now."

"Friends are very important," said Andy. "I didn't really mean that, about television, and not caring about close relationships. I've never meant most of what I've ever said. It was almost all for effect."

"You can say what you mean around me," said Luna. "It's all right." She turned her head and called over her shoulder. " Daphne, do take Ginny back to the flat. I'll be along in a bit."

Ginny felt Daphne's hand on her, and then the sucking, squeezing sensation of side-along Apparation. She slithered down onto the couch in the flat she was still sharing with Luna. "You tell me what was really going on back there," she said without preamble, her eyes closed, knowing that Daphne would know what she meant. "What was Astoria actually talking about? It's something bad. I can tell."

"Maybe not," said Daphne. "There's no way to be sure—"

"_Tell_ me. Everything."

"All right." The other girl sighed. "I followed Draco and Astoria round the continent for months. I certainly didn't know everything about what was going on, but I learned as much as I could, and there were certain things, too, that I simply… knew, and I'm not sure why or how. And one of the things was that their marriage was never consummated."

"I knew that too," said Ginny without opening her eyes.

"The bond wasn't broken, was it?" Daphne asked quietly. "The one between you and Draco."

"No."

"I think I knew that. I think I've always known. Anyway… my sister tried and tried. But she just couldn't get him to do it. She got… pretty bloody frantic, by the end. And she knew that if she could catch him at one of the feasts of great power, she just might be able to get him to do it."

A cold chill went up Ginny's back. "All Hallow's Eve." _When he wanted me to consummate our bond. He wanted to do it tonight… we could be together right now, at the Crystal Palace…_

Daphne nodded. "But it has to be more than just the date. There needs to be some sort of compelling reason. Ginny, do you know of anything?"

Ginny sunk her face in her hands. "I saw a vision of him in Azkaban," she said in a muffled voice. "I was desperate, I would've done anything to save him from that, to be sure that I'd be able to come to him if it happened and he really did end up there… or almost anything… we did do some things. But we didn't do, you know, that. Draco wanted me to do it, to consummate the bond. Tonight, I mean. But I wouldn't agree to do it."

"Oh," Daphne said faintly.

She looked up. "I'm still not sorry," she said fiercely. "I can't be. I just can't. He wanted me to be a Malfoy mistress, Daphne. He wasn't willing to leave Astoria, either. I mean, I know she's your sister, but if he wouldn't have even done that…"

"Astoria would be better off if Draco did leave her," said Daphne. "Look, Ginny, we don't know what happened. I've got to ask you a rather personal question to help me figure it out, all right? Have you ever had sex with anyone?"

Ginny blushed. "Well, no."

"So Draco wanted you to give him your virginity tonight?"

"Yes, and he seemed to think it was extremely important. That part of it, I mean. He said that…" Ginny tried to remember Draco's exact words. "That we wouldn't be protected unless I was a virgin."

"Well, there you have it," said Daphne. "He'd never get the same sort of protection from Astoria."

"But he's married to her," said Ginny. "They've got to consummate the marriage eventually. Don't they? Isn't that how the Pureblood Bond works?" Each word cut like a knife. She forced herself to say them, one by one.

"They're supposed to," admitted Daphne. "But Ginny, I'll tell you this. I can't _feel_ that anything's changed in my sister's… aura, I suppose you'd call it."

"But you wouldn't necessarily, would you? I mean, your ability is about sensing death and disaster. So why would you see that she's…" Ginny forced herself to speak again. "Triumphed? That she's won something?"

"I suppose it's just hard to believe I wouldn't feel _something_," said Daphne. "She's my sister. We have a bond, no matter how much we've hurt each other sometimes. No matter what she's done to me. No matter what I've thought of her." She looked away. "Draco doesn't want her. He's going to do everything he can to resist her, Ginny; I'm sure he will. You're what he wants."

"It's not enough to be what Draco wants," said Ginny. "I'm not a 'what', Daphne. And there's something else." She stared at the wall, because no matter what Daphne had said, she didn't want to meet the eyes of Astoria's sister while she said this. "I was running towards Draco during the entire time that the clock was striking twelve. He could have got away from Astoria then. Nothing was stopping him. But he didn't do it, Daphne. He didn't even look at me. And I've got to find a way to work with the bastard every day for the gods only know how long. I've got to find a way, and—and I will find it, but I won't keep hanging onto him, or these dreams about what he could be to me, or whatever this hold is that he's had over me all this time."

Unexpectedly, the other girl smiled. "Good for you, then."

"I just wish…" Ginny rubbed her forehead. "I wish it didn't hurt so much. Daphne, when is it going to stop feeling like somebody's pounding one spike through my head and another one through my heart?"

"I wish I could tell you," said Daphne.

"I've got to go to sleep." Ginny tried to stand and couldn't quite make it. Somehow Luna appeared and helped her to bed, and soothed her, and stroked her forehead, and shut the curtains against the bright, bright moon, the color of Draco Malfoy's hair.

Ginny slept for ten straight hours. When she woke up and pushed back the covers, her head was very clear. She had dreamed about a parchment covered with rows of neat handwriting, and she could still see every one as perfectly as if it were written in the air in front of her. She sat down at the kitchen table and transferred them to paper while she ate a bowl of cereal. Luna had left a note saying that she had gone round to a factory to make an experimental film of having her hair cut. While that sounded like an odd endeavor to Ginny, she sincerely hoped that Luna was enjoying herself.

An owl flapped at the window, and she let it in. It carried a roll of parchment requesting her presence at the Ministry of Art at four o'clock sharp that afternoon. There were some pleasant phrases about coming into the office and speaking briefly with the Junior Secretary of Culture about the preliminary phases of the project; she'd work extensively with him for several weeks, he himself was quite, quite sure that her artistic collaboration with Draco Malfoy would be a mutually rewarding experience, signed Very Truly Yours, Gaylord Humperdinck, Senior Minister of Art.

Four o'clock. That gave her one hour to prepare. It would be enough time.

Ginny's smile widened until it was positively frightening. She tucked the parchment in her purse and headed for the shower, her head humming with plans.

She decided that _rewarding_ was definitely going to be the word, all right.


	59. Ginny Makes Her Position Clear

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially QueenofNight.

Ginny stomped into the reception room for the Ministry of Art and Culture, parchment clutched in hand. Just entering the building had pushed her over the edge from irritation into a teeth-clenching slow boil that any of her brothers would have recognized all too well. The far-from-palatable fact that the room had pink wallpaper, pink shag carpet, a pink desk, and a pink table represented the final straw. She sat stiffly in a pink lounge chair, vowing not to lose her temper, no matter what. _Oh, wouldn't Malfoy just love that!_

An elf with pink hair looked up from behind the desk. "Yais?" she said in a nasal accent that reminded Ginny strongly of a Muggle dentist's drill. "Haiw may ai be of assistance to you?"

"I'm here to see Draco Malfoy," said Ginny Weasley.

"Mr. Malfoy is quait busy, of course. Ai don't believe that he hais any open appertments today. You aire free to wait, if you like, but his taime is quait precious." The elf gave a distinctly superior-sounding sniff.

Ginny's knuckles went white. The rustle of paper warned her that she was in danger of damaging the precious parchment, and she relaxed her fingers. "I received an owl," she said in clipped tones, "which informed me that I was supposed to appear at this Ministry office promptly at four o'clock this afternoon. So I suggest that you check your appointment book again."

The elf flipped through a small pink book. "Oh. Ai see. Ai do apologize. You may go right in, Ginny."

"It's _Miss Weasley_ to you, just as it is to him," said Ginny, striding past. "And I'd lay off the hair dye if I were you, Pinkie."

Her temper rose as she made her way down the corridor. It was rising too fast, in fact, and she realized it. With a sigh, Ginny stopped, knowing that she needed to collect herself. She wedged herself into a tiny alcove and gathered her hair into a severe bun. As she bent her head back, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She craned her head around to see a sliver of an office window. Draco's head was revealed in it.

Ginny held her breath. His features were shadowed; he'd turned most of the overhead lights off and the rays of the afternoon sun must have been coming in through another window. But she still saw his face so clearly, and he looked so _tired._ So… _Lost. He looks lost. Oh, fuck. Can I go through with this? I have to! It's not as if anything's changed. He still went home with Astoria last night, he still didn't even look at me as he left, he still hasn't spoken to me since, or owled me, or anything. Oh… his eyes are so huge in his face, so silvery-grey, and he looks so thin…_

Draco rested his chin in his hands, staring into the distance. Ginny turned away, hiding her own face. She felt sorry for him. Whether it was right or wrong, she just couldn't help it, and for a moment, all she wanted to do was to tear the parchment to shreds and set them afire with a good _Incendio_ charm.

_But I've got to go in there,_ she thought drearily. So she did.

She knocked on the door. Then, unable to bear waiting another second, she pushed it open. Draco looked up at her from behind the other side of a very large mahogany desk. For just a second, his face was utterly unreadable, and time hung suspended.

Draco leaned back. He put his elbows on the arms of the luxurious leather chair. He looked up. And then he smirked at her.

Ginny looked back at him, dumbfounded. _That smirk. Ooohh…. Ooh! That smirk!_ It was exactly, but exactly, the one she had expected to see the night before. It was the one she had even wanted to see, in a way. It was the one she had been imagining that morning as she wrote out the words on the parchment she now clutched in one hand, and thought about just why she was writing them. It was the sunny smirk of the carefree playboy she'd seen a year and a half before in Madame Lonelyheart's Coffeeshoppe on the day of her failed attempt to have sex with Harry Potter. It was light and easy, casual and carefree, the smirk of a beautiful young man who had once littered the landscape with his cast-off girlfriends, and who'd undoubtedly still be doing it now if it weren't for that tiresome bond between himself and his snotty, ugly, not-overly-bright, but decidedly more socially appropriate wife—a bond that had been consummated the night before, Ginny was now sure. All by itself, that flippant smirk seemed to deny that anything had ever happened between herself and Draco Malfoy. Or, at least, anything that might have meant more to him than a bit of meaningless pleasure.

Then and there, Ginny vowed that she wouldn't go back on even one of the things she'd written on that list. _And if worst comes to worst… yes. I'll even do that_, she thought grimly.

"Nice office, don't you think?" he asked.

She looked round, noting the hand-rubbed wooden wainscoting, the alabaster sconces, the soft ivory silk wallpaper hung with original Monet paintings. "It's a cut above the bubble-gum pink nightmare in the lobby, I'll say that."

"Yes, well, that's Gaylord's Humperdinck's taste. I do wish I'd had a chance to see just how dreadfully it clashed with your hair, though. You ought to have taken photographs. Perhaps Rita Skeeter might have been interested in publishing them in the _Daily Prophet_. One never knows."

"Maybe I should have. Then I could show a copy to Colin, watch him die of horror, bring him back to life with a Revivification spell, and do you a tremendous favor by having him call in some of his interior decorator friends to give you some tips on butching up that lobby, Malfoy," said Ginny in a syrupy sweet voice. "Otherwise, between that and the job description, nobody in the wizarding world will ever believe you're not queer."

"Oh, they'll believe it, all right," said Draco, examining his fingernails in a leisurely way. "Even though no heterosexual male has held any sort of position in the Ministry of Art and Culture since the end of the Neolithic Age. You see, a number of my ex-girlfriends work here as well. A _large_ number. Quite an extraordinarily excessive number, really. They'd probably be happy to give interviews and detailed performance evaluations if necessary."

_Oooh.._ "I do wonder how you bribed your way into this one to begin with, Malfoy," said Ginny. "From a fugitive on the run to some sort of underling in the Ministry of Culture. Quite a step up."

"Ah, ah, Weasley. The official Junior Undersecretary of Culture. Don't tell me that you've forgotten the title already. You do seem rather… distracted. Still, if your memory needs a bit of a jog…" Draco tapped an elegantly manicured finger on the nameplate on the desk, elaborately engraved with his name. "I'm sure I've got some linen stationery as well. Would you like to take it with you? It might make for a rather classy replacement for that hideously tattered thing you're carting round." He flicked a finger at the parchment she was clutching in one fist.

_The most perfect opening,_ decided Ginny. _And Malfoy will have nobody but himself to blame. But…_ She looked at him again. Above the still-present smirk, there were dark circles under his eyes. No. She wouldn't haul out the big guns unless he forced her hand.

Draco gave a tremendous, theatrical sigh. "So? All-too-unimpressive opening salvos over? Yes? Let's get down to business, and let the artistic collaboration begin. We've got a great deal to get through this afternoon alone, Weasley, so if you don't mind—"

She unrolled the parchment with a snap, sending it soaring out over the surface of his entire desk. Draco jumped back to not-quite-avoid being hit in the face by the edge of the page. He winced.

"Ouch! That _hurt._ What the hell is this?"

"This," Ginny said with relish, "is a list of the _Official Weasley Rules of Engagment._"

Draco sat back slowly. "Engagement? And in what, pray, tell, will we be engaged?"

"You know perfectly well. We're about to be forced to work together for weeks on end. The opportunity to redo the fountain is incredible, of course. But because the prospect of being stuck in your company constantly isn't exactly a pleasant one—"

"Sometimes things that are forced can be rather pleasant, you know."

Ginny leaned forward, one hand straying to her side where her wand hung in its holster. "Malfoy, have you ever heard that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach?"

"Er… I've heard that's true. Does it mean you're going to cook something quite nice and bring it as a snack?"

"It means that it's only true if I angle my wand a certain way. Now,about those rules, Malfoy…"

"All right. I suppose I might as well allow you your little rant, Weasley. But do try to get on with it, can't you?"

She picked up the parchment and began reading. "In order of importance. Number One. You will never, ever, and I mean ever, under any circumstances at all, refer to certain incidents between us in the past. You know which ones I mean. _Don't_ you, Malfoy?" She glared at him over the page.

The smirk widened. "Yes, I do seem to recall the incidents of which you speak, oddly enough. But even if I were to, er… adhere to this rule… why haven't you bothered to mention how it might apply to _you_?"

"I don't need that clause, because I'd never say anything about them to begin with. But if you want me to go into specifics, we're both going to forget all those incidents, Malfoy," she said steadily. "And I do mean everything that's ever happened between us along those lines. It'll all be totally forgotten, just as if I'd cast a very very strong Memory charm over both of us. If I didn't hate _Obliviate_ so damn much, I'd actually do it right this second. But from this moment on, every word, action, and thought going on in this room—or anyplace else we are for the next several weeks- is going to be exactly the same as if I had."

"Hmmm." Draco drummed his fingers on the desk. "Can you control your thoughts as thoroughly as that, Weasley?"

"Yes," she said, her eyes very level on his. "I can."

"So can I," he said softly. "If I agreed to pay the least bit of attention to these little _Gryffindor Girl Guides' Rules_ of yours, that is. I haven't promised a thing yet, Weasley."

Ginny decided to ignore that last remark, for the time being. "Moving on. Number Two. Absolutely, positively no physical contact between us. At all. No hugs, no handshakes, no brushing up accidentally against each other in the corridors—nothing."

The smirk took on an amused quality. "Weasley, wasn't there something rather important you overlooked when formulating Rule Number Two?"

"What?" Ginny snapped.

"You were assuming that there's any desire on my part for such contact at this point."

She could feel the slow flush creeping up her throat. _I won't answer him. I won't. I just simply won't. I'll go on. That's what I'll do._

"Number Three," said Ginny, her voice sounding rather strangled. "Ahem."

"Do you need a cough drop?" asked Draco.

"No, I don't need a cough drop! Number Three. You will never insult anyone I care about again in the way that you did before. Not when I'm around, anyway."

He sat up straight. "Now, that's really unjust,Weasley. I've never said a hard word about Lovegood."

"That's probably just because she's with your best mate Zabini. I'm talking about my family, Malfoy. I don't want to hear so much as one negative word about any of them."

"Can I compliment Percy Weasley's obsessive fixation with the thickness of cauldron bottoms then? That ought to be all right."

"Malfoy…" She scrunched the parchment threateningly.

"Well, it's a matter of supreme indifference to me. None of them actually annoy me too egregiously anyway. Except, of course, for—"

"My brother Ron, who you will never refer to as 'the orangutan' again."

"Never?"

"Never."

"Can't I even speculate on the likelihood of his diving for peanuts if I threw them in his general direction?"

"No. You can't."

Draco sighed. "I don't know about that one, Weasley. It might be a deal-breaker. What else is included in Number Three?"

"The ban extends to the rest of my friends. I don't want to hear another word from you about Colin, for example. And especially not Dean. You've been very, very rude when it comes to Dean."

Draco's eyebrows suddenly met in the middle. "I'll be as rude as I like about that supposedly overly noble scion of Gryffindor. Don't you know what he's actually up to, Weasley? Don't you understand what he really wants from you?"

"Whatever it might be, I don't see why it would have anything to do with you, Malfoy."

"It doesn't," muttered Draco. "Except that you'd better not meet him here. If you think I'm going to allow you to embarrass me by dropping your knickers for Dean Thomas in the corridors of the Ministry of Art and Culture- "

"I'm sure you'd know the best knicker-dropping nooks and crannies around here, Malfoy, considering that the place is supposed to be crammed with your discarded ex-girlfriends from days gone by," said Ginny. "Unlike you, however, some of us have class, and would never do anything like that in the workplace. But if it would set your mind at ease…" She paused. _Does Daphne want everyone to know that she's with Dean now?_ she wondered. She certainly remembered hearing back at Hogwarts that Daphne's parents had despised Dean's family because they were among the _voudon_ elite of Haiti; the Greengrasses considered them lower-class, not the same as wizarding purebloods at all. _Hecate knows what would happen if they found out, and I'm sure that Daphne is on the outs more than enough with her mum and dad already these days. Maybe I should do what I can to keep it a secret…_ "I won't bring Dean round the Ministry at all," she finished. "None of my other boyfriends, either."

She didn't know which evil fairy had whispered that last sentence in her ear, but she wondered if maybe she should have booted its arse right out of her head when she saw Draco's eyes go hard and cold.

"You know, I'm humored you so far, Weasley," he said. "But when it comes right down to it, I might as well tell you that I don't plan to stick to any of these rules. Malfoy don't follow rules very well, you see."

"This Malfoy will. You don't have any other choice."

"Really?" asked Draco. "And do you have anything to back up that interesting assertion?"

Ginny took a deep breath. _Here goes…_ "Yes. I've got plenty. I wasn't going to say this unless I had to, but you've rather forced my hand. You see, my father's worked in the Ministry for over thirty years, and I've picked up loads about Ministry rules. Last night, I remembered something very specific." She leaned forward. "You were a wanted fugitive for several months, Malfoy. And now you're working for the Ministry. You've been rehabilitated, or whatever it is that you've claimed- well, snakes can't be rehabilitated, of course, but we won't get into that right now. But I know exactly what this means under Ministry law. I am not under obligation to work with you."

"Don't be stupid, Weasley," said Draco. "You're not going to turn down a contract like this."

"No, I certainly wouldn't. However, I don't have to work with _you_. Because of your fugitive past and your on-parole status, I can request someone else, And if I do choose to work with you, well, Malfoy, all I can say is that you'd better behave yourself… or else. "

Draco looked utterly stunned.

Ginny grinned. "Are you beginning to understand? All I have to do is to complain about you, and then…"

"And then, what?" he asked in a cut-glass voice.

"And then you, Mr. Malfoy, just might be forced right back to fugitive status."

He narrowed his eyes. "You're bluffing."

"I'm not." Ginny looked back at him calmly.

"You just said yourself that you don't know whether it's true or not."

"That's right. I don't. But do you really want to take that chance?"

Draco seemed to think for a few moments. Then he opened a drawer and took out a mother-of-pearl cigarette case. He opened it and lit a cigarette. _Snick._ The sound was very loud in the silent room. "I think the real question at hand is whether or not _you_ want to take one."

"I don't know what you mean," said Ginny. The smell of chocolate tickled her nose. Only Draco Malfoy, she decided, would smoke a chocolate cigarette.

"You see, I know that the not-so-innocent Miss Ginny Weasley has done a number of things that she would prefer to remain… shall we say… sub rosa." He blew a smoke ring. She ducked it.

"Malfoy, Rule Number One—"

He held up a hand. "Ah, ah. What did I just say? I haven't agreed to follow any of your rules, as of yet. But I wasn't referring to any of the fascinating situations that might be referred to in Rule Number One. No, I'm talking about activities such as, oh… lurking in the tunnels below St. Mungo's."

"Oh," said Ginny. Oh. Shite.

"Yes, oh," said Draco. "Trust me, Weasley, you might not want any pieces of information covered by Rule Number One to get out in public, but at least the only real consequence would be more than a bit of awkwardness during Sunday dinner at the palatial Weasley homestead. If Potter and his merry crew of ne'er-do-wells at the Department of Mysteries ever got wind of the fact that you were under St. Mungo's that night, however… well, you might get into just as much trouble as I would."

Ginny digested this cheery information in silence.

Draco pushed his chair back and put his feet up on the table. His shoes were immaculately polished black calfskin leather, Ginny saw. He blew another smoke ring. "The problem, you see, Weasley, is that we know too much- much too much- about each other."

"So what happens now?" she asked. 

"Now?" He studied her. "That all depends. Are you going to betray me?"

"To Harry?" Ginny could barely stifle a laugh. "You're joking, right? No. Are you going to betray me?"

"No. But honesty compels me to add something else."

"Honesty? From a Malfoy?"

"Just listen to me," said Draco. He sat up and leaned forward, clasping his hands together. He was so close to her now that she could smell smoke and chocolate on him. "If you ratted me out, Weasley, you'd almost certainly save your own skin. You'd rehabilitate yourself with Potter, I imagine. We both know perfectly well that I could hardly do the same. So is your answer still no?"

When did Malfoy start smoking? she wondered. It was all she could think about for a moment. She imagined him sitting on a veranda in a villa in Florence or Milan, a penthouse in Paris, staring into the night, lighting a solitary cigarette, that one point of light in the darkness—

"Well?" His voice interrupted her. She jumped slightly. I

"Yes! I mean, no. I mean, it's still no. I mean, of course I'm not going to betray you, Malfoy."

Draco nodded slightly. Some sort of unbearable tension left his face and body, and she realized that it had been in him since she had first seen him through that sliver of window before she entered the room. He smiled at her, and the smile was as shocking as it had been when she'd first seen him in the tunnel under St. Mungo's, trying to open the secret door.

"Then," said Draco, "I accept the Official Weasley Rules of Engagment."

"Uh… thanks," Ginny said awkwardly. "So you do understand that things have changed, right? I mean, that wasn't exactly spelled out in the Rules, but that's sort of the upshot of the entire thing. Things have changed between us completely."

"Oh, they've suffered a sea change," agreed Draco." Into something rich and undoubtedly strange, all right, but not at all what we started out with. We're business partners now. And since you've been so kind as to remind me of my fugitive and non-rehabilitated status—"

"I'm rather sorry about that, Malfoy," said Ginny blushing.

"Don't be," said Draco. "I can't say that I'm a fugitive—they've rather skipped over that part of it at the Ministry, you know. But I can't claim to be rehabilitated, either. Anyway, what I was going to say is that you could even claim that we're partners in crime."

"Partners in crime," repeated Ginny. "I do like the sound of that. It's got a nice ring to it. Malfoy, let's shake on it. I know I said no physical contact, but I think a handshake is all right. That's what business partners would do."

"Of course," said Draco smoothly. He held out his hand to her, and Ginny groaned inwardly at the sight of his long, knobbly fingers. Maybe a handshake hadn't been such a brilliant idea after all.

Just a handshake, she told herself over and over as their hands came closer and closer to each other. It doesn't mean a thing. It can't. It's the sort of things that business partners do with each other all the time. Of course, business partners haven't generally been doing the sorts of things with each other's hands as we have, but—fuck! If I can't even stick to Rule Number One, then I don't know how I ever expect this thing to work. All right. I can get through this. Don't feel anything. Don't think anything. Don't remember anything. I'm going to touch his skin in about one more millisecond… 

Don't think, don't feel, don't think, don't feel Ginny kept chanting to herself, until finally the handshake was over, and she was fairly sure that she'd go through it without thinking or feeling a single thing.

Draco tapped a button on the desk. "Pinkie!" he called. "Do bring in those documents, all right? There's a good elf."

"Of course, Mr. Malfoy. Ai will be raight in."

Ginny could practically hear the syrup in the elf's tones dripping through the intercom. Her eyebrows went on. "Pinkie?" she said to Draco. "You mean that's actually her name? That's just what I said to her when I told her that she needed to lay off the hair dye."

He grinned. "Now, Weasley, that was very, very unkind of you. The genes of art-and-culture elves have mutated over the past twenty thousand years, you know. Their hair is naturally pink, and they're quite sensitive about it."

"I imagine she'll survive," Ginny said dryly. "After all, she gets to see you every day, so I imagine that she's constantly on the verge of passing out from ecstasy."

Draco grinned. "You said it, Weasley, not me."

The door opened. A walking stack of papers came in. It deposited itself on Draco's desk, and was revealed as Pinkie. Ginny groaned inwardly. She remembered Ministry formalities all too well. What I wouldn't give for a Quick-Quotes Quill right about now…

Pinkie batted her eyelashes at Draco in a downright alarming way. They were pink too, Ginny noticed. "Will you be requiring anything else today, Mr. Malfoy? Ai can be available in the front office for the rest of the evening."

"I'll just bet she can," Ginny muttered under her breath.

"Hush," Draco admonished her out of one side of his mouth. "Er, no, Pinkie. Take the rest of the night off, why don't you?"

"Very well," said Pinkie, looking distinctly disappointed.

"She's going to try to charm her hair blonde again," said Draco as soon as the door closed. "It never lasts more than half a day. There's the most hideous half-and-half combination while the spell wears off. It's like some sort of ungodsly marshmallow and peppermint sundae."

"Ugh!" Ginny shuddered, pulling the first stack of papers towards her. A Subprocessing Preliminary Prologue to Agreements on the Supplementary Measurements for Marble Block A436.786. "I've got a confession to make, Malfoy. My mum once caught me making one of those when I was six years old." She kicked herself as soon as the words had come out of her mouth. Now Draco was sure to say something unbearably snotty about poverty-stricken Weasleys who allowed hordes of unsupervised offspring to run about in the kitchen, or something.

But Draco grinned at her. "Then I've got a confession as well, Weasley. One summer when I had just turned eight years old, my father and mother were both away on… er… business trips for an entire week, and I had the Manor entirely to myself. Well, not quite to myself, but my deaf, half-mad old Aunt Walpurgia had come to stay, and she sat in the front sunroom all day long and did nothing besides watering her aspidistras and feeding her nasty little pug dog. So I had the run of the kitchen. I ate nothing but chocolates, morning, noon, and night, in every combination I could dream of. Marshmallows and mixed pickles were involved at one point, I believe. The house-elves had to obey my orders, of course, and I had a riotous week, complete with a good deal of being ill."

Ginny had to laugh in spite of herself. "You seem to have survived all right."

"Of course. Or I wouldn't be in the Ministry at this moment, facing several million pages of dubious-looking official documents. What say we take the easy way out, Weasley?" He deposited a Quick-Quotes quill on top of the one of the stacks, and it began busily signing on the dotted line all by itself.

"That isn't quite exactly legal, Malfoy," Ginny said primly.

"So?" He raised a single eyebrow at her.

"So…as the daughter of a Ministry official, I really ought to complain," said Ginny. "But as an artist who doesn't want to get stuck casting Carpal Tunnel charms nonstop for the next several weeks, well, I don't see a thing." She stared up at the ceiling.

"Weasley, I like the way you think," said Draco. Then he laughed. It was a light, free, easy sound, ringing, irresistible. And incredibly—unbelievably—Ginny found herself laughing with him.

Afterwards, she Apparated back to the sidewalk in front of her flat and walked up the steps, deep in thought. Somehow, she and Draco had actually managed to make it through the evening. Of course, they'd done nothing but sign papers for a couple of hours—or to be more accurate, the Quick Quotes quill had signed papers, and they'd sat in a reasonably bearable silence. Unbelievably, there had even been times when they'd carried on something resembling a normal conversation. He'd told her more about working at the Ministry of Art and Culture, and she'd talked about her artistic projects. They'd even discussed their favorite foods. But after tonight, they would really start working together. Gods, could this possibly work? Could they do it without killing each other, going mad, or both?

And yet… and yet, she'd laughed with him. For just that moment, there might never have been any tension between them at all. It had lasted no more than a moment, of course. It couldn't. But Ginny never would have believed even that moment possible, after everything that had happened between them.

Maybe it was possible after all. Just maybe. Only time could tell. Of course, mused Ginny, maybe she'd better come up with a good hiding place to dump Draco's body, just in case he smirked at her one time too many and she snapped.

She reached the top of the landing and opened the door to her flat. Then she groaned. I don't think I really have to spend any time worrying about where to hide Malfoy's body. No, that part would definitely be taken care of, and there were more immediate problems to hand when it came to him now.

Ron was sitting on the couch, and he was glaring at her. He got to his feet, and she could hear how heavily he was breathing from all the way across the room.

"Um… hi, Ron. Sorry I haven't called you," said Ginny. "I've been awfully busy." Oh, shite, she thought guiltily. Did any of my brothers even get an invitation to the Halloween show? But she knew why she hadn't made sure that they did. Harry had made sure that they didn't know she'd been in the tunnels underneath St. Mungo's, and she'd known that if she saw any of them so soon after it happened, she just might give herself away. Kind of late to worry about that now, though. She tried again. "Ron, I meant to owl. I'm so, so sorry. I don't think I let you know about that art show—"

"Oh, I know about it now," said Ron, in the kind of even, almost pleasant voice that meant she was really, really in trouble. "Everyone knows about it now. They've read about it in the Daily Prophet. "

Ginny was starting to get a very uncomfortable feeling. "It did get some publicity."

Ron gave her a shark-like smile. "Yes. It did. Have you seen it yet?"

"Um—no, I don't think so."

"Oh. Then I think you should." He picked up a copy of the newspaper off the couch. Ginny had an extremely bad feeling about the entire thing now.

"Ron, maybe we should talk about—"

"This?" Ron stabbed a finger into the middle of the gossip page. "Is this what you want to talk about, Ginny?"

A postage-stamp sized photo of Rita Skeeter grinned at her from the top of the page, shark-like.

Draco Malfoy, the marvelously mysterious and recently rehabilitated Malfoy heir, was revealed as the new Junior Minister of Culture at last night's teddibly teddibly exclusive Halloween art bash held at the Bas-Blu Gallery. Only the swankiest of the swank heard the announcement that the delicious Draco will be working hand-in-glove with the winsome darling of the art world, none other than le enfant not so terrible, Ginny Weasley. She's received the most coveted contract in many a year—namely, the redesign of the frumpy and mopey Fountain of Magical Brethren—but that's the catch. She'll have to spend those tedious long, long hours slaving away under Draco Malfoy. Sounds like a pretty light punishment to this reporter! From the expression on le Ginny's face, she apparently agrees. Mrs. Malfoy doesn't seem quite so overjoyed when this reporter caught up with her a few minutes later—but ce la vie, as they say. This is one artistic collaboration that promises to be hot, hot, hot, and your faithful reporter swears to catch every scrumptious drop of the witches' brew!

A photograph accompanied the story, of course. Ginny scanned it. She was squeezing Draco's hand and staring at it as if she were trying to figure out the best way to slurp him up through a straw. The next photo had Astoria in it. She looked ready to whip out her wand and cast a Killing curse on everyone she saw. Ron's hand pushed the paper down.

"Well?" he asked ominously.

Her hand tightened around the paper, scrunching it into a small ball. "Well, Ron, I've spent the last several days threatening to hex loads of different body parts into eentsy-weentsy, teeny-weeny, itty-bitty pieces. If you don't want to be next, you're going to sit down on that couch, shut up, stop coming the heavy brother, and listen to me. I'm not ten years old anymore, and you're going to have to learn anger management sometime, you know." She gave him a push. The look of astonishment on his face, she decided, was a very, very satisfying sight indeed.


	60. Sibling Rivalry

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially Marinka! Thanks so much! I'm glad you liked the entire fic. BUT, the version posted here is not going to be exactly the same. So you might want to check it out again around Chapter 75.

_Chapter 60_

Ginny felt quite proud of herself for her newfound strength, courage, and maturity. She wondered why she hadn't begun dealing with all of her brothers on this basis years before. She was sure that now she'd never, ever lose her temper with any of them again when they started to push her buttons. Particularly not Ron.

She crossed her arms, stood back and smiled as Ron bellowed about _scummy albino ferret_ and _slimy Slytherin snake_ and _ugh… ergh… Malfoy!_, that last sentence clearly indicating a great many swear words that couldn't really be expressed in the presence of what she knew he still insisted on thinking were his sister's innocent ears. She rolled her eyes through a great deal of increasingly furious stomping on the floor from the upper flat and thumping on the ceiling from the lower one. She did worry a bit when Ron began to look positively apoplectic, but she comforted herself with the fact that she knew some very good _ACE Inhibitor_ charms. Finally, Ron attempted to use reason, and that, she had to admit, was a bit unsettling.

"_Listen_ to me, Gin; just listen. All right? The St. Mungo's investigation's on hold for right now. That's what we all heard. That cow of a wife Malfoy's got- Hysteria or whatever her name is—anyway, the Aurors caught her trying to break in last week."

"Oh?" asked Ginny, trying to look innocent.

"Yeah. They couldn't get any sort of charge to stick, though. I'm sure she paid somebody off to wriggle out of it, but whatever it was that really happened, they don't have any other suspects now. So Harry's got to lay off. But nobody's ever going to convince him that Malfoy's innocent. I hate to agree with him about anything now, but when it comes to this, I do."

_Oh, fuck,_ thought Ginny. Ron really _was_ using reason. "Fine. What makes you so convinced that any of this translates to Malfoy having some sort of complicated evil plot going.?"

Ron ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know! He's always got an evil plot going."

_Fuckity fuck,_ thought Ginny. Ron was sounding more rational all the _time._ "That's not true," she said wildly. "You just don't know him, Ron."

His eyebrows met in the middle, a furious line of brick-red. "And that means you think you do?"

_Oh dear. That may have been the wrong thing to say… Well, too late now._ "I know that he's the Junior Minister of Art and Culture now, and that I've got to work with him if I expect to get this project done."

"Oh, yeah. Yeah. What did I just _say_ about evil plots? Why do you think he got himself appointed a junior minister of anything when he's never worked a minute in his life before? Because he wants to support art?"

Ginny decided that Ron thought he was still using a rational tone of voice, but he sounded more as if he were about one second away from losing it completely, rolling on the floor, chewing up all the carpet, and spitting it out .

"Don't make me laugh," he went on. "It's_ got_ to be part of an evil plan. Maybe you don't see it, Ginny, but I certainly do. And you have to keep away from him."

"I _can't_, Ron," she said sharply. "This public art project is the greatest opportunity I could possibly have. It'll do wonders for my career. I simply can't turn it down." _Oh, please, please don't let Ron remember that I actually could, if I insisted on it,_ prayed Ginny.

Apparently, Ron did not. He squared off from her where they stood, glaring. "You aren't going to do this, Ginny. That's all there is to it." Undoubtedly, she thought, he was still convinced that he sounded rational.

"I _am_ going to do it, Ron."

"You won't."

"I will."

Ron gave her an evil smile. Really, thought Ginny, Draco Malfoy at his best would have had a hard time outdoing it. "If you do," he said, "I'll call Rita Skeeter. I'll let her interview me for her next story. It'll be a long, _long_ interview."

Ginny groaned, and then decided that he _had_ to be bluffing. "That's really low, Ron. But go ahead and do it, if you like. She's already writing rubbish about me as it is. You might as well give her the material she needs to do something really properly rotten. How about 'Why Does the Wanton Weasley Whore With the Wicked Malfoy, Her Woebegone Brother Whines'?"

"_Ginny!_ How can you—don't even _say_- you know I wouldn't—" spluttered Ron.

"I thought you and Rita were going to be best mates from now on."

"I wouldn't spit on that bitch if she were on fire in front of me! Oops. Sorry,Gin."

"Then don't threaten what you can't follow through on," she said coolly.

"I'll get George in here, right this minute," said Ron, looking shamefaced but determined. "You know that's not an empty threat."

"I can handle him," said Ginny, with a bit more confidence than she felt. She wasn't entirely sure how George would react to the latest Skeeter output, but she did know that he would be a great deal easier to reason with than Ron. _Of course, a rabid hippogriff in heat would be easier to reason with than Ron!  
_

"I'll… I'll…" he spluttered.

"Yes?" asked Ginny. "I'm waiting."

"Give me a sec! I'm just about to come up with something really good!"

"Could you give me something to read in the meantime? This might take awhile."

"_Ginny!_ What's this? You're even starting to _talk_ like Malfoy, aren't you? You've picked up that snotty, snarky way he has of putting things! The expression on your face even looks a bit queer… " Ron peered at her. "Did you just lift one eyebrow?"

"Er…" Ginny squirmed.

"That's it."Ron began chewing on a fingernail furiously, mumbling something under his breath. Ginny watched him sidelong, catching random phrases here and there. _Before it's too late… evil influence… get you away…wonder if a Dynamite hex?_ She was starting to wonder if maybe she ought to Apparate out of her own flat. _No. Then he'd just be left for Luna to deal with, whenever she gets back from wherever she went. Wonder where that was? She didn't say she'd be with Blaise…_

Ron looked up. He had a crafty gleam in his eyes. Something about that gleam made Ginny very nervous.

"So have you come up with a plot just as evil as Malfoy's?" she asked.

"Even worse," he said. "I'm going to tell Mum."

George walked into the living room of the flat half an hour later, looked at Ron, and sighed. "Little bro, you pushed her too far, didn't you?"

Ginny sat on the couch, her arms crossed, looking shamefaced and defiant. "I warned him," she said. "He can't say I didn't. But he wouldn't stop yelling at me. So finally, well… although I certainly didn't know that _this_ would happen."

"It still seems rather harsh, though." George sat down next to her. "I've seen that story as well, and Gin, you know that it doesn't look good. Especially that photograph. What the hell were you doing with Malfoy, anyway?"

"Shaking his hand!" snapped Ginny. "Hasn't anyone ever heard of a professional, business-like handshake between business partners, which is what businesslike people do in a business setting?"

George's eyes narrowed. "I _run_ a business, Gin. And I've never forgotten when Fred had to say on the subject. 'Always shake the hand of our supplier, because there's no better way to make sure he doesn't have a shiv in it.' But I _don't_ do it because I want to eat him up with a spoon, which is exactly the way you were looking at Malfoy."

_Oh dear._ "George, you know the sort of tricks Rita Skeeter hauls out to try to sell her stories," said Ginny. "She's hardly above using a picture taken at the worst possible moment and then putting the worst interpretation on it. I tried and tried to tell Ron that everything she gets into that paper is rubbish and always has been, but he wouldn't listen to me, and that's why I finally lost my temper and—" She felt a nudge on her leg, and glanced briefly down at her brother. "Look, do you want to join him down on the floor, George?"

"Not particularly," said George. "He doesn't look very happy."

"I've given him some water." Ginny pointed at a full bowl. "Ron, do you want me to catch you some flies as well?"

Ron glared up at her. "_Ribit_," he said.

George grinned down at him and picked his brother up, examining him from all angles. "Bit of an improvement, don't you think? He makes for a very handsome frog."

"_Ribit!_"

"I don't like the way he's flopping about. Can frogs have nervous breakdowns?" Ginny asked anxiously.

"I don't know, but I hope you can change him back, Gin." George gently put the brown frog into the little bowl Ginny had set up on the side table. It immediately hopped into one corner and began to brood. Looking at the miserable amphibian that had once been her brother, Ginny began to feel distinctly guilty. She quickly took out her wand.

"_Cambio,_" she said, tapping it on the glass.

She held her breath. For a few moments, nothing whatsoever happened. A tiny golden crown seemed to flicker just above Ron's head. She heard George swear something under his breath behind her. _This is not good_ flashed through her head. But then the frog suddenly began to expand, inflating, growing in size, and in only a few seconds, Ron was crouched on the table, his hair dripping water and his face still slightly green.

"Are you all right?" she asked anxiously, after much too much time had gone by without him saying anything.

Ron raised a finger and pointed it. "You," he began to say. He couldn't seem to get any further. "_You…_"

The situation was serious, of course. _Terribly_ serious. Ron might never forgive her. This was nothing to laugh at, and yet it was almost impossible to keep a straight face, especially when she saw that Ron's left hand was still webbed.

"Er… little bro?" George ventured. "We've got to make sure that the spell's properly taken off you, because things can get pretty bloody nasty if it isn't. So if you could just…?"

Ron opened his mouth all the way. His tongue shot out and knocked the copy of the _Daily Prophet_ out of George's hand.

It was too much. Ginny broke down in helpless laughter, and then George was laughing too, and finally, reluctantly, Ron joined them.

"I promise to hit Malfoy with the same spell if he puts one toe out of line," she said to him fervently. "I'll take a wizard's vow on it, if you like."

Ron grimaced. She took his hands, feeling that the webbing was completely gone.

"Can't you just trust me?" she asked quietly.

"I…" Ron cleared his throat. "I'm trying, Gin. Your spellwork packs a punch, that's for sure." He ruffled her hair, and for once, she didn't feel irritated by it. _He's doing the best he can,_ she realized.

"I brought an extra-extra large pizza for you, and I put it in the fridge as soon as I Apparated in," said Ron, as he and George went out the door. "I want you to eat it."

"I'll _eat_ it, Ron," said Ginny.

"I mean it. I want a long owl about what was on it so I _know_ you actually ate it. I expect a full report on how it tasted."

"_Ron…_"

"I know for a fact that Charlie taught you that _Bodicea's Defense_ move when you were fourteen years old and Marcus Flint was bothering you. I heard he sang soprano until the summer hols after that one. You still remember it, right? You'll use it against Malfoy if he gets mouthy, or looks at you the wrong way, or raises an eyebrow, or—"

"_Ron!_ I can take care of myself."

George touched his shoulder. "Go on, little bro. I'll be down in half a sec."

Ron looked between the two of them, sighed, and apparently gave up. Ginny knew that particular look in his eye, however. At best, Ron was only beaten for the moment.

After he had clattered down the stairs, Ginny forced a smile. "Well. That didn't go so badly, did it?" She _seriously_ wondered what George was up to now.

"It could have gone much worse," said George. "And I was afraid that it would do. I really thought at first that you'd performed a much more serious spell, but- never mind that for now. I wanted to talk to you about something else."

Ginny's heart sank. Now _George_ was going to start questioning her about Draco Malfoy, and she wasn't nearly so sure about dealing with him on the subject as she'd been about Ron. She didn't need to worry about much more than blustering from Ron, really.

"I don't like you working with Malfoy—"

"I can handle it," Ginny interrupted him.

"Yeah, I know you can. The point is that even though I don't _like_ it, I know that you can handle yourself around him just fine. To tell the truth, Gin, I'm not really worried about _you_," said George. "Or about anything that Malfoy might try, because you can handle that as well. It's got more to do with Harry."

"Oh?" Ginny asked as lightly as she could. She was starting to feel more uneasy every second. "Ron told me that he'd had to lay off the investigation, because Astoria was the only one snooping round St. Mungo's, and then they couldn't even prove anything against her."

George rubbed his chin. "Right. There isn't a shred of evidence against Draco Malfoy, as I understand it. Harry had his chance to get it, and he couldn't, so now he can't move against him openly. But the entire Department of Mysteries will be watching him like a hawk. Given the slightest excuse…" He let his words trail off. "Gin, I know that you can refuse to work with Malfoy if you want to. Why don't you just do it?"

She took a deep breath. What to say, what to say? _I ought to say that I will do it. Because George is right,_ she thought guiltily. _And he doesn't even have the faintest idea of how right he is. Thank God he doesn't know what really happened under St. Mungo's that night. I don't owe Malfoy a thing. I'd be so much better off if I never saw him again. Fuck, why can't I just forget about him? That's it. I'm going to open my mouth right now and say-_

"Because this commission means everything to me," she said. "And I can't throw it over. And I really think he's the only one in the Ministry who might understand what the new fountain artworks could really be. I won't give that up because of Harry. I _can't._" _All true,_ she thought with a faint sense of surprise. No, not the entire story, not by any means at all. But still, every word that she had said was true.

George sighed. "All right. I just hope you know what you're doing, Gin."

"Of course I do," Ginny said firmly.

She didn't, of course. She realized it the moment she walked down that corridor that led to Draco Malfoy's corner office in the Ministry of Art of Culture the next morning, and stopped at that spot where she could see him in that sliver of the window, but where he couldn't see her. He was standing at the desk, his bright head bent over something on it, and the sun glinted off his hair and turned him into an angel of light. Except that she knew how fallen he really was, and how far he had so nearly taken her. His hands moved over a scroll of parchment on the desk, and the silvery hairs on the back of his fingers glowed in the sunlight, too.

_I was a fool to think this would work_ ran briefly through Ginny's head, before she forced herself to march down the corridor and open the door.

"Good morning, Malfoy," she said stiffly.

He looked up at her and smiled pleasantly. "Weasley. You've had a refreshing night's sleep, I hope?"

"Mm-hm." Was his smile just a _bit_ too knowing? Well, he didn't need to know that it had been anything but refreshing, and very, very filled with all of those fractured, disconnected scraps of dreams that might have been about him. Or maybe not. Anyway, she _definitely_ seemed to remember the sight of a smirking face popping up over and over, all night long. She'd kept waking up and going to the fridge for chocolate donuts until she'd eaten the entire box, which was clearly all Draco Malfoy's fault.

"Good to hear, because we've got a busy schedule ahead of us today. First, we're going to pay a visit to the current Fountain of Magical Brethren, of course—that is, if you think your sense of aesthetic taste can survive it; I'm not entirely sure about mine. Then, we'll examine the original sketches. Then—"

"Wait, wait." Ginny held up a hand. "I thought that we'd just—" _Stay in your office the entire time_ were the words on her lips, but at the last second, she stopped herself from saying them. She had no desire to make herself sound any dumber in front of Draco Malfoy than absolutely necessary; it really wasn't necessary to watch his lips curve into that amused smirk at this hour of the morning. Of course they couldn't stay in his office during the weeks of the fountain project; they couldn't even stay in the Art and Culture wing, and Ginny felt unbelievably dumb for not figuring out that point much earlier. They'd have to go all over the Ministry. And those _sketches_-

"They're going to be stored in one of the subfiling libraries," said Ginny. "I think… if I remember it right, it shares space with the Licensure division, the one where Percy works." (1)

"Well, there you go," Draco said lightly. "I'm sure that your brother will be quite happy to help us delve through the intricacies of the Ministry's filing system."

"That's the filing library that's right next to the offices of the Department of Mysteries," said Ginny.

"Unfortunate location, isn't it?" Draco said lightly. "Still, needs must when the devil drives, as they say."

Ginny turned away from him slightly. _The Department of Mysteries. I thought Draco was there. I dragged Colin into danger, I brought Percy into it too, and all because I had to try to save him. I risked everything for Draco. Now, Harry will be there, watching, waiting, ready to pounce, and he'll see us together. If he sees anything that makes him suspicious, and it doesn' t have to be me jumping on Draco's bones—just anything at all, the least little hint—oh, shite! On top it all, I'vejust thought of him as 'Draco' three times now! _

She took a deep breath. There was only one thing for her to do now, and even for his own sake, she had to do it. She would tell him that she would not, _could_ not work with him on the project. "Malfoy, I—"

"Just a moment, Weasley," said Draco, his voice still light and pleasant. "You've got something quite valuable to say, I'm sure. But before you start in on whatever it is, I'd like to share what I've prepared first." He pointed to something on the desk, and Ginny realized that it had to be whatever he had been working on when she saw him through the window.

"You see, I was really very impressed by your literary output yesterday," he went on.

She was starting to get a very bad feeling about all of this. "Malfoy, I—"

He held up a hand. "Hear me out, Weasley, if you don't mind. I listened to you, if you'll recall. After I went home, and I was inspired to create this." He picked up the top of a scroll of parchment.

Ginny's hands went on her hips. "What's this?" she demanded.

He smiled patiently at her. "Yes, I'd rather expected that sort of instinctive reaction… hmm, your face is turning a bit red, too."

It was all beginning to make sense now. Horrible sense. Her face flamed. How desperately unfair it was, she thought, that one couldn't control a blush. "It's a list of your rules. Isn't it?"

"No, it isn't at all. I know better than to mention anything about rules to you, because I wouldn't expect you to follow them," said Draco.

"What makes you think I couldn't follow a rule?" Ginny demanded. "I'd be better at it than you!" Even _she_ could hear how stupid she sounded now.

Draco gave her a strange smile. "I'll explain it, if you really want to know."

"If you don't mind, Malfoy, that would be nice."

"Alll right. I told you yesterday that Malfoys don't follow rules very well—remember?"

"Yes," Ginny said guardedly.

"But that's not entirely the case. The truth is, actually, that they will do when they can clearly see that it's of benefit to them. But something tells me that Weasleys never will. So I know better than to try to get you to do it. You can lead a wild hippogriff to water, but you can't make her drink, after all."

Had she just been insulted? Ginny wondered. It certainly _sounded_ that way… _well, sort of… _But Draco's face looked bland and innocuous, still wearing a pleasant smile. And it was true that she wasn't good at following rules, although Ginny would have thrown herself in front of a herd of rampaging hippogriffs before admitting it to Draco Malfoy.

"Then what's on that parchment?" she asked, moving her arms to a folded position.

"Ah, yes. This." Draco tapped the page with a quill. "I've decided to call it 'Draco Malfoy's List of Fairly Firmly Stated Facts.'" Ginny tried to peer over the top. "Ah, ah, ah…" He bent it away from her. "Would you like to hear what I've come up with? I think it's pretty interesting, if I do say so myself."

"Might as well," said Ginny.

"Item Number One," said Draco. "This was the first Fairly Fascinating Fact that came to mind, and if I could just say a word about its nature so that you're not at my throat at the very start… it would need to be grandfathered in before _your_ Rule Number One. So with that caveat in mind, may I tell you what it is?"

The aforementioned herd couldn't have dragged her away after hearing that, as she was sure he was perfectly well aware. "Just get on with it, Malfoy."

He cleared his throat. "Well, a number of… incidents… in our mutual past can't be entirely blamed on me, you know. You know what I'm talking about, right?"

Ginny did. She narrowed her eyes at him. "Malfoy, if you're going to say they were all my fault—"

"I wasn't at all," said Draco. "You can be as innocent as the driven snow if you like, Weasley. No, what I was about to say that is that they were really incited by a Malfoy ancestor who generally goes by the name of Loki. Mortals also know him as Satan, Lucifer, the Devil, the Jungian Trickster Archetype, Kokipelli, Bugs Bunny, and so forth. Well, his purpose in life… or rather, existence, I suppose you would say… is to stir up trouble. He particularly enjoys egging mortals on to create incidents exactly like the ones which took place between the two of us. These sort of situations in fact produced the phrase 'the devil made me do it.'"

"So what does all this mean?"

"What did I just _say_, Weasley? In the grand scheme of things, the devil really did make me do it. I wouldn't have done otherwise."

Ginny digested this in silence. On the face of it, this story had holes in it big enough to sling several bags of Kneazles through, and the longer she thought about it, the larger they yawned. Just for a start, what was 'it'? Did this mean that they would never have been thrown together in the first place? That she wouldn't have stood over him a year and a half ago and brought herself to orgasm while she molested his delectable sleeping body? That he never would have expertly introduced her to the sensual world during their nights at the cottage back in May? That he wouldn't have given her so much pleasure when she came to him as a succubus on Vendetta Island only a few nights later? That he wouldn't have lured her to the Crystal Palace the week before and seduced her into nearly agreeing to his insane and insulting plan to become his official Malfoy Mistress? What?

_Every time I hear a Muggle say 'the devil made me do it', all I can think is that's it's the worst excuse I've ever heard in my life,_ she thought. _To use it when the devil's actually your cousin is even more pathetic._ It was right on the tip of her tongue to tell Draco so, but then a thought came to her.

"This is the last time we'll ever mention this or refer to it in any way, of course," she said, "but just for the purposes of making this perfectly clear, Malfoy, does this cover what happened at the Crystal Palace a week ago as well?"

Something flickered in Draco's eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. "Of course it does," he said smoothly. "And then we were trapped together in a room designed to heighten the sexual arousal of its occupants. The rest was inevitable."

She pressed on. "Then what about that 'standard Malfoy arrangement?'"

"Well, Weasley. " He gave her a devilish smile. "You would make an ideal Malfoy mistress, you know. Sure you won't reconsider?"

"If you ever mention that again," she said, "you won't ever have to worry about the question, because you won't have the necessary equipment to follow through on the answer."

Draco laughed. "I rather like its current location, thank you very much."

And that was it, thought Ginny. "So what are the others?"

Draco picked up the parchment again. "Item Number Two. As long as we're working together, you, Weasley, should suppress your normal component of curiousity when it comes to anything having to do with me."

"I thought you said that these weren't rules."

"It's not a rule. Only a fascinating fact. You really should do." Draco shrugged. "Of course, if you choose to poke and pry and snoop about, you can. I know better than to believe I'd be able to stop you."

"Oh." Ginny felt oddly deflated. "What else?"

He rested his chin on one hand, looking up at her with grey eyes. They suddenly seemed very dark, she thought. "We should refrain from discussing our private lives."

"What makes you think I'd want to hear about anything you get up to, anyway?" she asked mechanically as the air in the room went cold.

The slate-colored eyes turned opaque, shutting her out completely. "Then we're in agreement."

_I wish I'd brought a coat,_ thought Ginny. "This entire list seems to be made up of nothing but "should nots", Malfoy," she said stiffly, past the lump in her throat. "It's a bunch of rules, no matter what you want to call it. You're right, you know. Weasleys really do have a great deal of difficulty with following rules. We're not as crafty as Malfoys. We don't do it as a tactic if we think it'll get us what we want. So if you've nothing more to add—"

"But I do," said Draco. "There are many, many shoulds on the list, Weasley, and they're all to do with art."

"I don't know what you mean."

"You've studied art formally, correct?"

She nodded.

He leaned forward. "Will you be my teacher, Weasley?"

"You… you want me to _teach_ you?" she repeated. "Malfoy, what are you talking about?"

"You've got to teach me about art."

"Do you actually mean to tell me that you got the job of Junior Minister of Art and Culture without knowing anything _about_ art?" she demanded.

"Er…"

_Ron was right! He really does have an evil plot._ "Malfoy, what the hell is this? Your artistic appreciation is limited to _Playwizard_ centerfolds, isn't it?"

"I only read it for the articles!" Draco protested. "And, look, Weasley, I didn't have the opportunity for any sort of artistic education. You just don't understand. My father wouldn't have dreamed of- " His eyes turned very distant for a moment. "Well, it never would have been allowed in my family, let's just say that. So you've got to help me to understand what I've never been able to learn." He leaned closer, so that she could smell the chocolate on his skin.

"Teach me, Weasley," he said.

And Ginny found herself nodding yes. Because, of course, artistic education was a noble goal, and Draco Malfoy really did need to develop a sense of aesthetic appreciation if they were ever going to get this project done decently.

Besides, their partnership would be strictly on a businesslike basis now.

Really.

It _would._

**Author notes:** (1) See Chapter 26.


	61. Up To the Filing Library

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers!

_Chapter 61_

The sound of tinkling water played soothingly around them, mingled with the clattering footsteps on the marble floor of the atrium. Well, it _would_ have been soothing, Ginny thought, if what she was looking at hadn't been downright disturbing. She stared at the Fountain of Magical Brethren, which was laid out directly in front of her.

Draco stood at her side, looking faintly green. "That's not actually a stunning example of modern aesthetic taste, is it? Please do tell me it isn't."

"No," said Ginny. "It's the most appalling piece of shite I've ever seen in all my life."

"Good," said Draco. "I may not be terribly educated when it comes to art, but I know when I'm about to be sick. I'm quite relieved to know that I have good reason. Weasley, do you know any _Dramamine_ charms?"

"Can't help you there. I think I'm going to be ill as well," said Ginny.

"Do you think that anyone would get extremely upset if we used a Dynamite hex?"

"Well, it _might_ be easier to just have it hauled away, Malfoy."

"Damn. I suppose you're right."

He did look dizzy, Ginny thought. _Exhausted, too. I wonder if he's been sleeping lately?_ No; of course he hadn't been. She remembered it now. _She'd been lying in Draco's arms, the side of her cheek pressed against his chest. She could hear him breathing deeply and evenly. He couldn't have fallen asleep… could he? No. It's only been a couple of minutes. But then, he said that he hasn't been sleeping well at all lately._ But that seemed as if had happened so long ago that she could barely remember it, even though it had only been a week before.

_I told Dr—no. Malfoy. Malfoy! I told him that if I didn't hate Memory charms so much, I'd cast one over both of us. I told him that it would be the same as if I had. I meant it. I did…_

Ginny realized that he was looking at her strangely. She'd taken too long to reply to what he'd said.

"Er, how about if we take some notes?" she asked. "We should at least have a clear idea of exactly what we're dealing with."

"It's not a bad idea," said Draco. "This isn't quite the same design as the original fountain, actually. I think it's even _worse_, which I didn't believe possible."

"How do you remember that?" asked Ginny, startled.

Draco shrugged. "I don't pretend to have had the advantages of a formal education in art, Weasley, but I like to think that I at least have some sort of natural aesthetic taste. It's been permanently scarred by this new fountain. I couldn't help remembering that at least the old one wasn't _quite_ as hideous in many of its details."

Draco did have raw artistic ability, no doubt about it, thought Ginny. She'd already seen proof of that. _Those sketches he did of Marie sleeping… the ones in the crate, the ones I saw at the cottage back in May, the same night we…_ No. That was yet another memory she had to firmly erase from her mind when it came to Draco Malfoy. She went back to staring at the hideous fountain sculptures.

"Is that why you want to look at the original blueprints?" she asked.

He didn't answer. Fleetingly, Ginny wondered why. But she was still using so much of her energy in trying to concentrate on just how businesslike their relationship really was now, and she knew that there wasn't enough left over to waste it on wondering about anything that wasn't important. What sort of artistic statement do you suppose they possibly could have been going for?" she mused, looking at him sidelong, watching for his reaction.

"I do have one in mind," said Draco.

"Really?" She looked at him suspiciously. "What?"

"I don't think you want to hear it. It probably wouldn't put you in the proper frame of mind for embarking on an artistic endeavor."

"Oh, come on, Malfoy. I've _got_ to hear it now."

"Very well. But I'll thank you to remember that you asked to hear my opinion. Don't blame me if you don't like it." He leaned close to her and whispered, and his breath tickled her ear, while his lips did not quite touch it. ""The soppy witch is definitely sticking her other arm up that poncy-looking wizard's robes and tossing him off."

Ginny nearly choked. "And just how do you know that, Malfoy?"

"Easy. She's standing too close to him, and nothing else could possibly be causing the combination of glazed eyes and stupid grin. Also, their robes are cleverly cut to hide it. The maniacal goblin in the background's getting a free peep show… let's see… and the house-elf in the foreground looking up so adoringly must waiting to see if they want him to aid in any unnatural positions. All in all, I suppose that's got to be an artistic statement of _some_ sort."

Horrible laughter bubbled up in Ginny. It was all she could do to hold it in; she _mustn't_ laugh, they were right in the middle of the atrium of the Ministry of Magic with people all around them. Draco gave her an innocent look.

"Or they could be contemplating that centaur galloping in front of them with a bit of a stiffy. I suppose that's possible as well."

Ginny's eyes widened. She peered closer. _Oh, Circe! Malfoy's right! That centaur really does have a… oh, no.. _It was too much. She _was_ going to laugh. No, more than laugh; any second now, she was just going to lose it completely; she could already feel herself starting to shake, and in just one more second, she'd be rolling on the floor. Draco grabbed her arm. She winced, and lost all desire to laugh.

"Ow!" she exclaimed. "You're going to leave bruises. What was that for?"

His eyes glowed silver, and he didn't say a word. His mouth twisted into a bitter expression. Ginny looked up, and her heart plummeted. Harry stood across from them on the other side of the fountain, perhaps a hundred yards away, surrounded by Aurors.

"We've got to get out of here," she whispered to Draco. "Now."

"No," he said.

_But it's Harry,_ Ginny wanted to say. _Hurry, please—before he sees us, before it's too late,_, she wanted to beg. But she couldn't even open her mouth. Oh, gods, he was about to turn round! She could hear herself whimpering a little, and she hated herself for every second of the sound she made. She dug her fingernails into Draco's palm so hard that she surely must be hurting him, but he didn't move a muscle. _How did I end up holding Malfoy's hand?_ But she couldn't seem to let go. Even though it went against everything she'd laid down so firmly in her rules, she couldn't let go.

But then he was suddenly pushing her away. "For fuck's sake, Weasley, can't you stand up straight?" Draco hissed in her ear.

"Yes, perfectly well," snapped Ginny. She let go Draco's hand. It was easy once she heard the contemptuous tone in his voice; it was like the slap of icy water thrown into her face.

Harry turned, and the buzz of conversation on the other side of the fountain hushed. Hermione wasn't in the circle of Aurors surrounding him, Ginny saw. Neither was Zach Smith. Harry walked towards them, his booted footsteps ringing on the floor, his eyes on Ginny with every step.

"I've been trying to find you for weeks, Ginny," he said, without preamble. "I want to talk to you."

"I can't imagine why," she replied. Her voice was holding firm. _Not even trembling,_ she thought. _My legs feel like they're going to turn to jelly and slither out from under me any second, though. Wonder how long I have till they do?_

"I've got plenty to say to you," said Harry. "That's why."

"Well, I don't have anything to say to _you_," said Ginny. "I want you to leave me alone."

Harry gave a short, sharp laugh. "Really?" His gaze slid over to Draco. "I suppose you think you're clever, Malfoy."

"Actually, yes, I do," said Draco. "Or at least that's what intelligence tests have always concluded. I'm not entirely sure how the point is germane to the present conversation, however."

"You know bloody well what I'm talking about. We're watching you every moment. You've pulled the wool over a few people's eyes, but don't fool yourself into thinking you'll get away with it in the long run."

"And what, precisely, might the definition of 'it' be?" Draco asked in a clipped voice.

Harry looked uncertain for a moment. Ginny was sure of it, although she didn't think that anyone who hadn't spent as much time as she had in studying Harry would have seen that. _Wasted time,_ she thought.

"I'm not playing games with you," he said to Draco. "I'm giving you a warning. Not for your sake—for hers." He nodded at Ginny. "I know you, Malfoy. You'll try to get her under your influence, your spell, just like you did before. But you won't get away with it for long, and then I'll—I mean, _we'll_ get her back." He glared at the two of them for another long moment, and then he turned on his heel and stalked back towards the group of Aurors, his back ramrod straight.

Ginny let out a long, trembling breath. "Let's get out of here," she whispered.

"Where exactly do you suggest that we go?" asked Draco. "If you'd rather not encounter Potter again—not to mention his gang of idiots—well, I feel obliged to point out that the path to my office winds directly past all of them."

"I don't know! Somewhere. Anywhere." Ginny started grabbing Draco's hand, but he snatched it away.

"Look," he said out of one corner of his mouth, jerking his head towards Harry. She did. He was watching them both, his black brows knitted into a furious frown, his eyes a blaze of emerald. Ginny dropped Draco's fingers as if they were on fire.

"Follow me," she hissed, walking quickly towards the lift.

The door slid closed in front of them, shutting out the atrium, and they were alone. Ginny could feel herself going weak in the knees from relief. She'd half expected Harry and all the Aurors to barge in at the last second.

"Where to now, Weasley?" asked Draco, leaning against one wall of the lift. How _could_ he sound so casual, she wondered? Her heart was pounding fast enough to burst through her chest.

"Um… oh… I know. Ninth floor," she said.

The lift remained stubbornly unmoving.

Ginny groaned. "What's going on now?"

"Security's been tightened," said Draco. He raised his voice. "Override Level 101, please."

"But of course, Junior Minister Malfoy," the voice said in distinctly pleasanter tones.

"Thanks, sweetheart." He grinned.

_Sweetheart… oh… but I always knew that word didn't mean anything._ Ginny glared at Draco as the door opened. "There's probably a Ministry law against seducing the lift, Malfoy."

The grin widened, showing perfect, white teeth. "Rubbish. And the tactic gets results, doesn't it?"

"Hmmph."

Draco laughed. "Weasley, the real reason the lift overrode the rules for me is that I'm a Minister, even though I'm a very junior one. Anyone of a lower clearance isn't allowed alone on this floor anymore—unless they were already working here before the edict came down, that is."

"Why was that sort of rule put in place?"

"Well, there's a good deal more on this floor than only filing libraries, of course," Draco said lightly.

_The Department of Mysteries. Of course._ Ginny shivered.

"Cold?" Draco asked.

"Yes," she lied. Although she was sure, on reflection, that it wasn't actually a lie. There wasn't much heat up here.

They began to pick their way down a narrow, dimly lit aisle lined by tall shelves, each holding crumbling folders of parchment. The original plans for almost all of the architecture of the entire Ministry was here, Ginny knew. Draco followed closely behind her, and she was uncomfortably aware of his breath on her neck and his warm, solid presence behind her. If she turned suddenly, she would bump into him. It would be easy, some tiny, traitorous bit of her whispered, so very easy to do it and then pretend that it had only been a mistake-

Something huge and hairy popped up from behind a shelf.

"_Oh!_" She shrieked and jumped backwards, knocking an entire folder of papers from a low shelf onto the floor. _Oof._ There was nowhere to turn except into a wall of muscle, spare and lean but very solid, and then Draco was scowling down at her and his arms were lifting her up.

"Weasley, why have you become utterly incapable of staying on your feet? I seem to recall from your days at Hogwarts that you were a reasonably graceful Chaser, at least, but that quality seems to have gone to all hell."

Ginny pointed a trembling finger at the shelf. "Giant—huge—it's a s-s-_spider-_" _Never, never ever make fun of Ron again, I won't,_ she thought incoherently.

"I'm sure they employ exterminators here quite regularly," sighed Draco. "Do dry up, Weasley. I don't know what you thought you saw, but I'd lay odds that it wasn't a spider."

"Kill it," wept Ginny into his shirt, her voice very muffled.

"I really wasn't planning on the day turning out _quite_ like this," sighed Draco. "Very well. I'll play exterminator, if you insist." He leaned down and took off a shoe, wielding it over his head. "Hello?" he called. "Any arachnids on the premises?"

"A greeting. That's always pleasant to hear," said an irritated voice. "It's an improvement over plans for my demise, anyway. One would think that I'd be used to listening to that sort of thing by now, but I suppose that one never does entirely grow accustomed to it. Do put that rather oversized shoe back on your foot where it belongs, Junior Minister Malfoy."

Draco blinked. Ginny gave a guilty start and let go of his shirt immediately.

The head emerged all the way, followed by a short, compact body. "Quite done with the subject of my murder?" the filing-elf asked testily. "Or shall I wait while you search for some bug spray?"

"I'm really dreadfully sorry, Arachnos," mumbled Ginny, staring at the floor. "This has been a bit of a stressful day."

"Goodness knows, I wouldn't understand the first thing about stress," the elf said, clearly unappeased. "Constantly hearing plans for one's extermination doesn't count in the least. Would you mind dreadfully informing me of what you're both doing here?"

"Looking for the original plans for the Fountain of Magical Creatures, I mean Thingummy Bobs, I mean Brethren," said Ginny to her feet. "If that's all right with you."

"Hmmph," said Arachnos. "Well, as it so happens, it doesn't much matter if it's all right with me or not. As a Junior Minister, I've got to allow Mr. Malfoy access to these library stacks, and as his assistant, I'm compelled to provide passage to you as well. And the plans are located on Folder #34837.397 in SubDrawer A-HJGT.897 of Shelf HJGbjG765*&%.+_%."

Draco shifted his stance in some indescribable way, tilting the corners of his eyes upwards and shaping his mouth into a faint smile. Ginny's heart beat faster at the sight, involuntarily. "I'm sure that we both appreciate your help more than we could ever express," he said.

Arachnos's scowl deepened further. Because his face was entirely covered with the short, spider-like bristles, this had the odd effect of carving clear furrows and valleys in it, making the expression quite impossible to miss. "Humph," he said, stomping in the other direction.

Draco's face fell. "What on earth?" he muttered.

"I'm sure that technique of yours has never failed with any sentient being on the planet before this very minute," said Ginny.

"No, it hasn't," Draco said abstractedly. "That was the exception that proves the rule. But I rather think that your whining 'kill it, kill it' hardly improved his temper. And you've crumpled my shirt, Weasley."

Ginny glared at him. There were times when she _really_ wished that she didn't hate Memory charms quite so much. For a variety of reasons, she'd have given a lot to erase the last five minutes from both their minds.

She started marching down the aisle. Because Percy worked in this section, she did understand the filing system, at least. They turned left, then right, then left again, and then she stopped.

"I didn't expect it to be here," she said, frowning.

Draco leaned against a shelf, his hands in his pockets. "Any particular reason?" he asked casually.

"Well, we're awfully close to the Department of Mysteries. I _think_ so, anyway…" Ginny's frown deepened. "I really didn't think that they had stored anything so near to it. It just makes me wonder _why_."

"Well, I don't see why not."

"But…" Ginny's voice trailed off. She wasn't even sure, herself, what she was trying to say; she only had a vague sense of uneasiness. She'd certainly never forgotten that awful day at the end of her fourth year when she'd gone there with Harry and the others. _The day I saw Lucius Malfoy again…_ She shivered, and realized that Draco was watching her keenly.

"Why don't you make yourself useful by getting that folder off the shelf, Malfoy?" she asked, turning round. He stepped forward, towards her, and she could still feel his disturbing presence at her back.

"Of course," murmured Draco. He reached up behind her, and she felt the heat of his body, warmed from all their walking. He stood on tiptoe, balancing, and he leaned forward. They were very, very close to each other now. She saw his hand running along the shelf.

"I'm—I'm sorry I was so frightened before, by the way," said Ginny. "I'm embarrassed really. It wasn't only that filing-elf, it's this place. We're so close to the Department of Mysteries, and I suppose it makes me nervous. I'm not quite sure why, really, but—"

"Hush. It's all right, Weasley. I understand." The light was very, very dim here; she suddenly realized it, as she hadn't before. His voice was soft and disembodied.

"I didn't mean to crumple your shirt, Malfoy."

"I do have many others, you know." His words were meaningless, but the sound of them caressed her.

"I was silly. So silly." _What the hell's happening to me?_ she wondered dimly.

"Shh. You're very brave, Weasley. I've always thought so."

"Oh. I… Forward a little more," Ginny whispered.

"Mmm?"

"The folder. The one with the drawings in it."

"All right."

They were nearly touching. He was only a hair's breadth away from her. _Close. So close. Fuck. How did this happen? _They were getting a folder of drawings, only some drawings, she chanted to herself over and over again in her head.

"Where is it?" Draco whispered in her ear, his lips almost touching.

"A little… a little further." Her voice wavered. His hand moved closer still. His body curved. Her eyes closed. She was not quite steady on her feet.

_I'm going to fall,_ she thought. _I'll fall back into him. He'll catch me. Wait… no, this is absolutely mad! What_ She reached her hand out and touched the solid wall between the shelves, trying to ground herself, but it only made everything worse. _Nothing_ seemed solid now; she had become unmoored from everything at that touch. She floated someplace where nothing was quite real, and she would fall back into something terrible and frightening and sweet, something that smelled like chocolate and Draco and darkness.

"Just a little further, Weasley," he whispered.

Something knocked against the wall, and a folder fell off the shelf, crashing onto her foot. She winced and broke apart from Draco.

"Sorry," he said lightly.

She stared up at him, her head whirling in confusion. What had just _happened_?

"You're all right, I hope?"

"I—uh—I _think_ so—" Ginny fumbled.

"I certainly hope so. It's going to be bloody inconvenient to get you out of here with a broken ankle," said Draco. He glanced round the stacks. "Come on. Let's take these folders down to my office."

Ginny was glad to go, and she hurried down the aisles with Draco. Their footsteps seemed to be echoing very loudly in the silent library space, the noise overlapping oddly, and the journey out was absolutely endless. When the door of the lift opened, she didn't look back. But as it closed, she glanced at him sidelong, and for just a moment, she could have sworn that he had a strange look on his face. _Almost… satisfied? Well, I suppose it makes sense. We got what we came for, after all._ As for what had almost happened, or not happened, or whatever the hell it had actually been, it seemed unbelievable now that they were back under the flat harsh bright lighting of the lift.

"Level 7, Department of Magical Games and Sports and Ministry of Art and Culture," the female voice of the lift said creamily, and Ginny gratefully stepped out into the hideous normalcy of the pink front office.

_I never thought I'd be glad to see this colour again!_


	62. Caught in the Act Kind Of

A/N: Thanks to all the wonderful readers and reviewers, especially Queen of Night.

Some very small revisions (compared to the FIA version) start in this chapter, and they're going to increase as the fic goes on. So even if you've read the FIA version, there are new things coming up.

On the other hand, thought Ginny, maybe the sight of _all_ that pink wasn't necessarily good for her stomach, either. _It's exactly the same colour as that odd Muggle medication… what's it called… Peptic-Bismouth, or something, it's supposed to be useful when you feel ill… I wish I had a big bottle of it now; I'd swig the whole thing!_ A rush of queasiness swept over her. She grabbed onto the back of a chair.

"Goodness, Weasley." Draco's voice penetrated the uncomfortable haze of fuzzy pink surrounding her. "You look absolutely awful. Are you going to throw up? Should I turn you round the other way? These shoes were handmade by cobbler-elves in Milan, you know, and they're completely booked up through next summer, so even all the Malfoy money couldn't guarantee me a replacement until—"

"Shut up, Malfoy," groaned Ginny.

Silvery eyes peered into her face. "Did you eat lunch in the cafeteria? It's a remarkably bad idea. The lift warned me this morning about those salmon croquettes. That's why it always pays to show consideration to inanimate objects around the Ministry."

"My dad's been taking me here since I was five years old. I don't need you to tell me how to behave." The room gave a sudden lurch to the left, and Ginny nearly lost her footing. She grabbed onto Draco's arm. "Malfoy, I'm going to faint. Do you really have to be an utter arse and spout some pansy rubbish about your shirt getting wrinkled, or could you catch me before I hit the floor?"

"I think I could manage that. I don't mean to be an utter arse, you know." His voice sounded rather amused.

"And yet you always are. Ergh." She felt him lowering her into one of the pink chairs. Her head was spinning in such rapid circles that she really didn't think she could have made it there without help. _Maybe I really am ill. Delirious. Having crazed hallucinations. That would explain a lot. Dr—Malfoy! How many times do I have to tell you, stupid brain! It's Malfoy! Anyway, _Malfoy_ didn't really just nuzzle my ear and curve his entire chocolately-scented body a zillionth of an inch away from mine and do everything short of shoving me up against Stack # 3856%^&.*+= of Hush-Hush Hocus Pocus Licenses and having at it, which would have been perfectly unacceptable and awful, of course. No, I'm delirious, and I just had a crazed hallucination. That's it. I imagined the entire thing. Maybe we weren't even in the filing library at all._

She clutched at the folder in her hand, feeling the papers crackle. _No. We were. I suppose that means the rest of it happened as well. _

"What are you doing _now_, Weasley?" sighed Draco. "If your plans include scrunching those plans up into a ball, please do try to refrain. We went to a great deal of trouble to get them, it's already—well, I'm not even sure what time it is by now-" Ginny saw the flash of a watch.

"Three-fifteen, Junior Minister Malfoy," said a creamy female voice from his wrist.

"Thanks, darling," said Draco. "The point is, Weasley, that we've really got to get through these plans this afternoon if we want to stay on schedule. Up. You'll feel better once you're on your feet." He pulled her to a standing position, and Ginny did have to admit that her head cleared slightly.

"Now, what on earth was that all about?" asked Draco as they walked down the hall.

"I don't know," said Ginny, squinting against the bright overhead lights. She was still staggering slightly. "It wasn't the salmon croquettes. I didn't even eat lunch."

"Well, there you have it. You were light-headed from lack of food. Do you want me to keep some granola bars on hand? I can't have my assistant constantly losing consciousness on me, you know. That simply won't do at all."

She glared at him. "I'm not your assistant, Malfoy; I'm your business partner. And I don't think that was it."

"What do you suppose it was, then?"

He watching her just a bit too keenly. Ginny was sure of it. He was carefully waiting for her reaction, ready to read whatever it was like a book that contained all her deepest secrets and then respond in the most devious way possible. She just knew it. But she really didn't know at all, did she?

Ginny looked down at the floor, struggling to collect her thoughts, her feelings, her very self. Everything that was in her seemed to be frantically darting this way and that, whispering and whimpering and scratching against the inside of head, searching desperately for an exit. Something was going on, and she didn't know what. But… but she was afraid that she could know, if she only allowed herself to. Something bright moved in the corner of her vision. She glanced back up again, quickly.

Draco had turned to a window. He was staring critically at his reflection and running his fingers through his hair. As she watched, he curved his lips up into the faintest possible smile, and let the corners of his eyes tilt up even as the lids grew heavy. His stance changed just slightly. He prepared to turn back to her. Ginny's body responded involuntarily to everything that he had so deliberately done, and she knew.

Draco leaned against the wall so that he was only a few inches away from her. "Feeling a bit better now?" he asked smoothly."I don't know what sort of queer turn came over you, but I'm sure you'll be perfectly all right once you've had a chance to sit down and we've begun to go over those plans. Just come along to my office, and then we'll—"

Ginny moved away from him. "I'm not going another inch with you, Malfoy! We'll just stay right here."

"Really, Weasley, you're being rather ridiculous, don't you think? There's no point working in the corridor when I've got a perfectly good desk just a few yards away." His voice grew silkier, more persuasive.

"Oh, so you're going to start in on your desk next?" she demanded. "It wasn't enough to seduce your watch and the Ministry lift?"

"Goodness. Maybe you really are delirious. I'm sure you've got a fever. Here. Let me feel—" He reached out his hand for her forehead. She batted it away.

"Don't touch me!" she snarled. "Don't you dare touch me, Malfoy. Not that I'm surprised that you'd try. You've already proven that my rules don't mean anything to you!"

"_Your_ rules!" he exclaimed. "I seem to recall some sort of stipulation for no physical contact whatsoever, Weasley. Now, who was it who took upon herself to shake _my_ hand yesterday?"

"Don't change the subject! You know what I'm talking about, Malfoy."

He looked at her with a smooth, expressionless face. He was pretending that he didn't even know what she meant, thought Ginny. He was going to act as if those minutes in the library stacks had never even happened. She would not cry. Would. Not.

"I suppose I'll have to spell it out for you," she said acidly. "I can see how this is going to go. Whenever it's to your benefit, for whatever reason- I suppose it's because you need a moment's amusement or something, and I happen to be conveniently at hand- you whip out all your manly wiles again!"

"_Manly wiles?_ Really, Weasley, isn't that a bit much?" And then he only looked amused.

She strode towards him, stabbing her finger in his chest, feeling how thin he was. "Why did you _do_ it, Malfoy? Can you just tell me that?"

He didn't answer her. The look on his face was frozen into place now, but he still looked amused. And that, Ginny decided later, was what finally did it.

"Oh, don't tell me! Let me guess, Malfoy! I suppose Astoria isn't giving you what you need? Not exactly satisfying you, is she? You still need to look for outside entertainment, and I just happened to be there?"

Draco's frozen face went white. "I told you not to pry into my private life, Weasley."

"Aha! You admit that those so-called fascinating facts of yours were rules after all. Well, I don't care what they were. Nothing excuses what you've done, Malfoy, and—oh!"

He had grabbed onto her upper arms. He wasn't causing her any pain, but his fingers were like steel cages. "What are you talking about, Weasley?" he asked.

"I—you—Malfoy, you know what you did! It happened about fifteen minutes ago."

"That would hardly seem to merit this sort of reaction." His voice was implacable.

"You—you came up behind me when we were looking for the folder on the shelf," Ginny said in a rush. "You came very close. You almost touched me. I could feel you behind me, and you were so close, Malfoy." It sounded like nothing, she thought despairingly. But at the time, it had seemed to encompass everything. She couldn't begin to describe the truth of whatever it was that had really happened, and it was much too dangerous to even try.

"That's all? Really?" His silver eyes pierced her through and through.

"Yes! That's all. Now let go of my arms!"

He released her, and she hugged herself, trembling violently. She couldn't stop. The waves of trembling crested higher and higher, and they wouldn't stop. Then his hands were on her again, and she was secretly grateful, because otherwise she would have simply collapsed to the floor.

"If that's really all that just happened, then why are you damn near falling apart?" Draco asked harshly.

"Because… because of where we were. So close to… we were only a few feet away from…"

Ginny couldn't finish the sentence. A rush of memories overwhelmed her, rushing through her in the tidal wave she had fought so hard to hold back. It overcame her at last.

_Her fourth year. She'd been only fourteen years old; she'd gone to the Department of Mysteries. with Harry and the others the day they'd looked for Sirius Black. She'd cast the Bat-Bogey curse on Draco and he'd let her go, and even then, her secret heart had broken in her when she saw what she had really done, the ugly black things sinking their claws into the perfect alabaster skin of his neck and shoulders. He had run from them without a sound, as if he'd already learned to suffer in silence. And only a little while later, she had run from his father. Lucius Malfoy had chased her through the Hall of Prophecies, and she remembered it now. She had thought wildly that he was going to chase her everywhere else, through the chambers of death and thought and time and space, and that she would run and run and run until she fell fainting on the floor of a chamber that hadn't yet been named. Then he would stand over her and draw one caressing hand down her shrinking, helpless body. Unripe fruit, he would say. But all things ripen, in time. Do you know now for whom I have always kept you, Ginny Weasley? You are meant for my son. I have the power to offer him his dream of perfect purity in you, and he must never know the truth about this chamber-_

"Weasley, what the hell's going on? What's wrong with you?" Draco's voice broke into the thought deepening into vision. His real voice, his present-day voice. Ginny's eyes snapped open. He was standing in front of her, frowning. She looked down at his collarbone, and a thrill of horror ran all through her. His skin wasn't as flawless and perfect as she had thought. Hair-thin white marks ran down the base of his neck into the collar of his shirt. _She_ had scarred him when he was fifteen years old, and the scars would never leave him. How was it possible that she'd never noticed them before? She had hurt him; he had hurt her; his father had tried to destroy something in her and she was never quite sure if he had succeeded or not-

"What the fuck is this?" asked Draco, his voice rough. _Afraid_, Ginny realized. _He sounds almost afraid._

"I won't go back," she blurted. "Never. I won't. Your father chased me… he tried to make me… I won't, I won't…"

Draco gave a violent start. "What are you talking about? Weasley!" He shook her lightly. "Stay with me. You've got to tell me. Come on. What happened to you?"

"When I was fourteen yars old. I'll never go back up there. We were right next to the Department of Mysteries, we were right up against the bloody wall It was only a few feet away! I know what's there. Nobody who hasn't been in there can ever know what it's like and—I'll never go back there, Malfoy, it's too close, too close, and—"

"I didn't know," Draco whispered. "I didn't. Weasley, I _didn't_; you've got to believe me. I had no idea. I'll never take you up there again. Shh. Shh. Never again." Then his hand was stroking her hair, and she leaned into his chest, and he held her very close.

Ginny closed her eyes, feeling as if she floated in safety after surviving a storm. Nothing mattered now; nothing even felt real except the feel of Draco's arms around her and his hand smoothing her hair, as if the two of them were lifted out of time and temporarily suspended, knowing all well that the pulse of time beat ruthlessly, forgetting that it pressed in on them from all sides and would soon shatter their safety. _This moment_, she prayed. _Just this moment. Let me have this. It's innocent. It's pure. We're like two children, holding each other. We might never have committed our sins at all._

And as they stood together, nestled at the heart of a hurricane, the door burst open. With some instinct deeper than knowledge, Ginny understood that all hell was about to break loose.

The elf clattered in, her pink beehive askew. "Ai did my best to stop her, Minister Malfoy," she said in an agitated voice. "I just couldn't quait manage to—"

"Oh, shite." Draco turned to Ginny. "Weasley, get under the desk."

"No," Ginny said automatically.

"I've been—well, I'm not going to explain it now, Weasley. Let's just say I've been bloody unfair to you and I won't make it worse. Forget all that fucking stupid Gryffindor-ish bravery rubbish and _get under that desk._" Without waiting for an answer, Draco shoved her down.

Footsteps clattered down the hall. A nasal, grating, affected voice spoke. "Get out of my way, you. I know perfectly well that he's down here. Oh? He's my husband. Now move your pink arse, if you don't mind."

_Astoria!_ Ginny realized in a flash. She tried to get up again. A big hand appeared under the bottom of the desk and shoved her down, followed by Draco's upside-down head.

"_Listen_ to me, for fuck's sake," he said, sounding rather desperate. "You can't imagine what sort of trouble you'll get me into if Astoria finds you here. So don't do it yourself. Do it for me. Even if you think I'm an utter bastard, all Weasleys love self-sacrifice, right? It's in your very nature or some such idiocy?"

_Oh, shite. He's right. I think. Anyway, I'm going to do it. How does he always manage these things?_ Ginny subsided back under the desk just as Astoria came storming into the office.

"Where is she?" The blond woman strode up to the desk. Her face was mottled very unattractively, Ginny couldn't help noticing.

"If you're referring to Ginny Weasley," Draco said icily, "she's already gone. She left quite some time ago."

Astoria glanced round the office. "Oh. So you do admit that she was here."

"She's my business partner, so yes, it's rather necessary that she be physically present in my office while we're conducting business."

"Is that what you're calling her now?"

"That's precisely what she is." He straightened the drawings on the desk, arranging them on the folder. "It's the sort of relationship that I wouldn't expect you to comprehend, Astoria."

Astoria leaned across the desk, a malicious smile on her face. "You can call Ginny Weasley by whatever name you like, darling, but don't fool yourself into thinking that I don't know what you're really doing with her. Because you only want her for one thing, and I'm sure she's good at that."

"You don't know what you're talking about." Draco's voice became very clipped. "And if you've quite done, I'm more than ready to leave."

"I'm not done at all. Shall I tell you what that cheap little blood traitor is? She's nothing but a wh—"

Draco turned, so quickly that Ginny's eyes could hardly follow the movement. His face had gone cold and deadly. Astoria stepped back. "Don't use that word in front of me."

"I'm sure—you don't want me to because I'm talking about her," she managed to say.

"I won't hear that word used about any woman I know. I'm sure you remember my reaction when you referred to Millicent Bulstrode in that way."

"Yes, well—she's another. But as I recall, you were a bit upset. Nothing more. Nothing even close to the way you are now!"

Draco tightened his hand around an inkwell until Ginny was really afraid that it would break and black ink would start gushing out. "I won't hear that word used in my presence, Astoria. I'm not telling you again."

"But is it true?" Her voice rose to an even shriller pitch. "Forget about the word. Tell me, Draco, is it true? What is she to you now?"

His fingers tightened on the inkwell. "Don't say one more word, Astoria."

"You've got to tell me, and you know it. You don't have any choice, Draco, any more than I do, you've _got_ to!" She plucked at his arm. Draco jerked his head away from her violently, stepping to one side in an odd way.

_What's he doing_? Ginny wondered. _Oh gods… I know. He's turning away from _me_, not just from her. He doesn't want me to see his face._ Again, irresistibly, she remembered that moment when Draco had been dragged past her by a leering Filch at that awful Christmas party during her fifth year at Hogwarts. The shame on his face. The desperate disgrace. He hadn't looked away from anyone else at the party; he hadn't cared what they thought. He had only looked away from _her._ And she had looked after him with pity on her face, a pity she knew that he would have hated like poison if he'd seen it.

"Tell me," said Astoria, inexorably. "Is that what Ginny Weasley's been to you, Draco?"

"No," muttered Draco. "You know she hasn't been."

"But I can't be sure," said Astoria. "And I've got to be. There's only one way to _be_ sure, isn't there?"

"Oh, fuck, no."

"Oh, yes," said Astoria. She leaned forward suddenly, and she kissed him. She put a hand on the back of his bright head and she kissed him on his beautiful mouth with its folded-over top lip and the full pink bottom one, because she had a right to do it, because she was Draco's wife and he was her husband.

Ginny saw it through a haze of red. _I could kill her_, she thought quite calmly. _And if he wants it, if he wants her, if he… if he…_

Astoria's eyes were closed. But Draco opened his, and met hers. Those silvery-grey eyes were filled with desperate sadness. He shook his head just slightly, and Ginny knew. She would have bet anything at all that Draco would have given everything he had to not be kissing Astoria Malfoy at that moment, in front of her.

Finally, Astoria pulled back. Her face was strained and pale and filled with a sort of miserable triumph. "So that's it. You're telling the truth, Draco. You haven't done anything with your little redhead. Nothing final, anyway. Nothing… complete. The Pureblood Bond's still unbroken, isn't it?"

He didn't reply.

"Isn't it?" she pressed.

"Yes."

She pulled back from him. A brittle, artificial smile spread itself over her thin face. "And it had better stay that way, Draco. Now let's go. We're dining with the Flints at seven o'clock, and you know how exhausting they and their cast of characters always are. Then we'll be attending the Hermes midnight showing of the new winter collection. I'm still not satisfied with my ball gown."

_Ball gown… oh. The Pureblood Ball,_ thought Ginny. _The start of December. That's right._ Draco had told her about it in May. It seemed like a lifetime ago now.

"Then the Baroness van de Vere, or so she calls herself, is holding a séance salon featuring Voltaire's ghost," Astoria went on. "That's supposed to be very amusing, although the bitch doesn't like me in the least "

"Can't imagine why. Yes, yes, I know, Astoria. It's all a part of your ongoing plan to deprive me any decent sleep," snapped Draco. "Let's begin the fucking rounds again, shall we?"

"People are beginning to notice your attitude, Draco. It's disliked. I'll have you know that."

"Yes, well, 'people', whoever they may be, can all stick said dislike directly up their collective arse…"

Their voices faded as they walked out, and Draco didn't look back. Ginny stayed under the desk for a long time. When she finally came out, she felt something dripping on her head. Her hand came back smeared black. Draco had finally broken the inkwell.

Ginny flipped on the lights in her flat when she returned, and she groaned. Percy was sitting stiffly on the couch.

"Oh, Perce," she sighed. "I'm not in the mood."

"I won't be long, Ginny."

"I've got an awful headache. I really want to just drink some warm milk and go to bed."

"Then I'll make this very brief indeed. I'd rather avoid arousing any suspicion, and—well, I believe it would be best for me to return to the Ministry in a short amount of time anyway."

She sat on the couch, all her exhausted nerves on sudden alert. "Perce, what is it?"

"Ginny, you were in the filing library about an hour ago, weren't you?"

"How did you know? Did you see me?"

"No." Percy hesitated. "George and Ron placed sensors all round that location as soon as we knew that you were to work with Malfoy for the next several weeks. We felt it was… safest for you. So I knew that he was with you this afternoon, as well."

Ginny swallowed hard. "Yes, we were both there," she said as lightly as she could. "We were getting the original plans for the fountain sculptures. But I was perfectly all right. Perce, it's not as if Malfoy is dangerous now, or anything like that."

"I don't claim that he is. But he's not the only danger in the world." Percy took her hand, and she almost jumped. "Ginny, the two of you weren't alone."

"What do you mean?" she whispered.

"Did you hear suspicious sounds? Footsteps, or anything of that sort?"

"No… I… Oh, no." Ginny clapped her other hand to her forehead. "I think I did. I thought that our footsteps were sort of overlapping more than they should've been when we were on our way towards the elevator, but I wanted to get out of there so much by then that I didn't even know what I was hearing." She prayed that her brother wouldn't ask her why she'd wanted so desperately to leave. "Percy, who else was actually up there? Do you know."

"Yes. Yes, I do. But before I tell you, I want you to promise me that you won't become overly upset. There's simply no way if this really means—"

"Perce! Tell me!"

He cleared his throat. "Hermione Granger."

Ginny sank back. "She'll tell Harry; you know she will. Perce, what are we going to do?"

"Showing our hand in any way would be a great deal riskier than failing to take action, as you ought to know." Percy looked at her keenly. "Ginny, were you engaged in any suspicious activity with Malfoy?"

"No, I wasn't! We were just… taking the folder of drawings off the shelf." It was true, Ginny told herself fiercely. That really was all they'd been doing. But the _intimacy_ of that moment…. Oh gods, if Hermione really had seen it…

Percy glanced at his watch. "Six forty-five, Mr. Weasley," it told him in a pleasant, businesslike voice.

"Thank you, Miss Tempis. You're most accommodating," he told it. "Ginny, I've simply got to return to the Ministry. I didn't inform you of what I knew in order to frighten you; I do hope you realize that. If your actions were innocent—"

"They were!"

"Yes, well, then perhaps Hermione witnessing what occurred is the best thing that could have happened. She'll have no negative report to make to Potter." Percy rose and smiled faintly. "Do keep your chin up, Ginny. You'll pull through."

She looked after him for a long time after the door had closed and he had gone.

It was a very long time until Ginny could get to sleep that night, and she fell into a long, vague dream about an endless boat ride across a gray, still sea towards a jagged island in the distance. She stood in the prow of the boat, and her cheeks were wet all the way, although if it was from tears or spray, she couldn't tell. She wasn't even sure when dreams passed into waking again.

Then Ginny stared into the darkness, and remembered the rules she had read to Draco Malfoy only a couple of days before. She had wanted to drown all the memories of what had happened between them a thousand fathoms deep. _Can you forget everything?_ he had asked her_. I can_, she'd said. _I can, as well,_ he had replied. But what she hadn't understood was that this forgetting could not be done out of anger, and that was what she had tried to do.

Harry's eyes, like blazing emeralds, focused on her several hours before. Then on Draco. They had turned deadly, filled with hatred. She'd thought she hated Draco when she'd written those rules of hers, but remembering Harry's eyes, she knew that she hadn't even understood what hatred really was.

Hermione's eyes. She remembered how those had looked the last time she'd seen them, when she'd gone to the Ministry in her desperate attempt to save Draco from whatever it was they planned to do to him in the Department of Mysteries. Round, brown, carefully blank eyes. More frightening than Harry's had been. With Harry, at least Ginny knew exactly what he felt. He'd never been able to keep any secrets. But there was never any way to know what Hermione was thinking, or planning. And she'd seen her with Draco. Ginny knew that now.

Astoria's eyes. Narrow, icy, malicious slits of blue. Eyes that fell shut when she kissed Draco, as she had the right to do. But eyes that saw too much, and eyes that had once seen _her_ with Draco and knew at least something about what they had meant to each other. Ginny didn't even stop to think that she and Draco had meant nothing to each other, and never could have done; as she stared into the darkness, her mind racing, she forgot that she was supposed to convince herself of that. Astoria's eyes were prying and seeking for evidence now, and she wanted to find it... she would do it, too...

Unless there was nothing at all to find.

Ginny rewound her memory. Now she'd forgotten how Draco had held her that afternoon. Now she'd forgotten how she'd held him in return. How she'd thought for just a fleeting moment that all their sins might never have even been… that was gone, too. Maybe she'd better remember him kissing Astoria, so that she knew he could never belong to anyone else. But now she forgot the look he'd given her, the one that said he would have given anything to not be in Astoria's arms. She forgot the black ink dripping down over her hands from the crystal inkwell he had broken with the force of his fingers' grip.

_Drip… drip… drip…_

And drop by drop, the memories were gone.

_I really can do it after all,_ she thought. There was no sense of surprise; only a weary dread, and then she made herself forget that too. When Ginny fell back into a troubled sleep, she knew that she had made her mind a blank slate, and that she was ready to meet Draco the next day. And she was sure—very, very sure—that all of her resolutions would hold forever.

Much later, she would wonder if she somehow knew, even then, that she was making them in order to protect him and herself and the deepest core of the memories that remained, like seeds in frozen earth waiting for the sun. She would wonder if she had known all along, in her most secret, unexamined heart, that this was the most perilous path of all.


	63. Starting the Masterpiece

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers!

Again, there are small changes in this chapter. There will be more as time goes on, and I think they really improve the story.

Nobody has ever proven the existence of forgetting.

- _Friedrich Nietzsche_

November 3rd, 2001

Ginny took a deep breath. She pushed the office door open. Draco wheeled round, hands in his pockets. He gave her a pleasant smile. It did not quite reach his eyes, she saw. They remained silvery and blank. "An early riser, Weasley? I never would have expected that."

Ginny smiled back, knowing that her own eyes were flat and golden-brown, revealing nothing. "No, Malfoy? Well, we've got a lot of work to get through today. What happened to those plans for the fountain sculptures, by the way?"

He pulled them from a drawer. "Right here."

Ginny spread them out on the desk, and the creamy parchment crackled under her fingers. "I wonder how old these are. I never have heard when the fountain was originally built. The style seems relatively recent, I suppose."

Draco shrugged. "I couldn't say, but it's not as if I could serve as anything resembling a competent judge. I don't even know what the different artistic eras _are_. Cro-Magnon, do you think?"

Ginny looked at him sharply, but his expression was perfectly innocent. She began to rifle through the pages quickly. A long, knobbly finger stopped her.

"I have no capacity to appreciate art, remember?" said Draco. "You're not helping me build one by treating the plans as a flipbook, Weasley. Can't you slow down a bit?"

"Fine," sighed Ginny. "They really are repellent. There's the hideous wizard. There's the horrid witch, apparently picking her nose. There's the soppy house-elf. There's each statue individually, so we can see exactly how ugly they are. There they are as a hideously badly composed group. All in all, it's not exactly Michelangelo's sketches for the Duomo."

Draco's brows knitted together into one dark line. "'Michael Corner's sketches for a dorm'? What _are_ you talking about, Weasley? Is that tosser redesigning the Gryffindor dormitories, or some such rubbish?"

"Rule Number Three, Malfoy?" asked Ginny. "In which you're not permitted to insult any of my friends? Does that ring a bell?"

"Oh, don't tell me Corner's posing as a platonic friend at this point," snapped Draco. "I thought I'd quite thoroughly warned him off—" He stopped.

"What?"

"Never mind."

"Fine. I won't. Anyway, Michael Corner has nothing to do with anything, you Philistine. The actual point is that if this whole horrible travesty of art hadn't already been destroyed, tearing it down and starting over would be the only thing to do. Maybe it's actually _worse_ than what they have there now. I don't know why we're even bothering to look at this. We ought to just burn these plans and get it over with." Ginny kept flipping. "Here's an illustration of how the entire thing was set into a foundation. Too bad that was done halfway decently, or it would've sunk through the floor a lot earlier. And finally—"

But the last page was raggedly torn in half. She could see nothing clearly except a date stamp at the top. _1942_. Ginny stared at the numbers.

"That's when it was built," she whispered. Then she shook herself, and closed the folder with a bang. "That's all. I don't think it was terribly useful. But…"

"What?" asked Draco.

_But flickers. But shadows. Scraps of memories, or of dreams. A slithering snake, a hissing voice, a long, long way to fall. Pulled down into the chamber. Silly little girl. I became quite bored, having to listen to her silly little problems. A man standing above me, a man with silvery hair. Do you know now for whom I have always kept you?_

"Weasley?" A voice broke into her uncontrollable thoughts. "What is it?"

She looked up to see a face matching the face of that man, maybe in the way that an impossibly beautiful waking moment mirrors a sliver of screaming nightmare. "I- Nothing, Malfoy. I suppose it's only that I wonder what was in that last drawing. I'm sure it was just as bad as the rest. But even if it was an unexpected masterpiece, you'd better just know that I'm not going back up there to find it. If you want to run around that creepy library filled with giant snarky spiders, you can do it on your own."

"Duly noted, Weasley," said Draco. He took the folder from her hands and tossed it onto a shelf. "So what comes now?"

Ginny leaned back in her chair. "I suppose we start to discuss how we'll come up with an improved version of all the hideous things we've just seen."

"Shouldn't you teach me a bit about art before we get properly started? You did promise that you would do."

"Uh…" Ginny squirmed slightly. "It really isn't necessary."

"I heard a terribly amusing joke while I was at an otherwise excruciatingly boring dinner party in Romania. Do you want to hear it? It's got something to do with art."

"No, Malfoy. Now why don't we just—"

"How do you know when you're Baroque?"

"Malfoy, we've got an awful lot to get through tod—"

"It's when you've got no Monet." Draco beamed at her.

Ginny shot him a death glare.

"I can't say that I understand the punchline myself," he mused, "being entirely without aesthetic knowledge of any kind, but everyone else at the dinner party for the nine hundredth birthday of Vlad the Impaler seemed very amused."

"Do you mean that this is the sort of thing I'm going to have to listen to from you day in and day out for the next month and a half, Malfoy?" she demanded.

Draco smiled sweetly at her. "Perhaps you're beginning to see why I really ought to learn something about the five-thousand-year history of Western art."

_I suppose I walked into that one,_ thought Ginny. She took out a sketch pad and several pencils and put them on the table. "Maybe we ought to go at it a different way. Let's try exploring our ideas in some preliminary drawings."

Draco poked at a pencil, picked it up, and examined it as if he had never seen such an unusual utensil before in his life. "So we'd use these?"

"Malfoy, don't play the moron with me," sighed Ginny.

"But I love to play. It's an inevitable result of my deprived childhood." He looked at her sadly. "I was never really _allowed_ to run and play and laugh freely, you see. Tag was right out. And you ought to have seen what happened the time I tried a game of Drop the Handkerchief with Hinky, the house-elf, when I was six years old—"

"I'm not a Head-Healer, Malfoy, and you're not paying me a hundred Galleons an hour to listen to your tales of woe," said Ginny.

"Would you like me to start right in? I could give you a cheque today."

"That's not the sort of professional relationship we have, Malfoy. Anyway, yes, one generally does use a pencil in order to draw things. Shall we start with stick figures?"

"Your wish is my command, Weasley."Draco picked up the pencil and began to sketch. She peered closer. He actually _was_ drawing stick figures. She had to admit that they were still better than the original fountain drawings, though. After several minutes, Ginny realized that she had stopped seeing the drawings at all, and was watching his long, strong fingers move gracefully across the paper instead, and the way his muscles shifted and bunched and moved. She tore her eyes away, and she forced herself to start drawing on another pad of paper. Her own drawings were rough and awkward, worse than his.

"So when will those art lessons commence, Weasley?" Draco casually asked her as she left his office.

She looked back at him. He was leaning against the doorframe, hands in his pockets again, his hair mussed a bit on top. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and one corner of his pink mouth drooped tiredly.

"I'll let you know," she said, and then she hurried away.

_November 10, 2001_

Ginny was running late for her morning appointment with Draco, and she barely made it into the lift in time. She could see one other person standing in it, and she felt a stab of annoyance that they weren't holding the door for her, whoever they were. The doors closed behind her. Instantly, she wished that she had tripped and fallen flat on her face instead. Hermione stood in one corner.

After a quick glance in Ginny's direction, she put her head down and did not raise it again. _Don't look up,_ thought Ginny, although whether the order was for Hermione or herself, she really didn't know. _Don't. Don't, just don't…_ But she couldn't help it. She did look up, and she did turn her head to stare. Hermione was doing exactly the same thing. For an awful moment, their eyes met.

_Did you tell Harry what you saw that day?_

The urge to cry out the question was so strong that for a few moments, Ginny was convinced she'd actually done it. But Hermione bent her head down again instantly, and she knew that she hadn't.

The overhead lights glinted off the other girl's golden-brown hair, and Ginny kept staring, as if she could ferret out the secrets Hermione kept hidden in her head. Gods, but what had happened? Maybe she'd told Harry everything, but there just hadn't been enough to give Harry any reason to investigate Draco any further than he was already doing. Or maybe she hadn't told Harry anything, because there was no point. Why tell him something that was only going to remind him of how possessive he still felt about Ginny herself? But… Ginny frowned. Either way, why was Hermione avoiding even looking at her? A challenging stare would have made more sense, or a triumphant smile. _I really don't understand what's going on,_ she thought.

"Level Seven, Department of Magical Games and Sports, and Ministry of Art and Culture," the lift said creamily. "Junior Minister Malfoy is currently in his office."

Ginny could have sworn that she heard more than a hint of a giggle in that voice. Or maybe it sounded more as if the lift were about to go into a swoon. _Can lifts swoon? I don't think that's even possible, but when Malfoy's involved, who knows. It would be just my luck to have that stupid thing faint on me while I'm in the middle of getting out of it._ She scowled and hurried out of the doors the second they opened. She and Draco weren't getting anywhere at all with the drawings, and it had been a week since they started. And now Hermione's bent head would be floating in front of her face the entire time, on top of everything else.

She opened the door to Draco's office. He was sitting at his desk, bent over a sketchbook. The light shone off his hair. He looked up as she came in, and the shadows under his eyes were like pools of blackness against the shimmering brilliance. But his smile was pleasant and friendly.

"Weasley!" he said excitedly. "Come here. I think I've got the perfect solution to our problems." He patted the seat next to him. She sat down warily.

"What is it, Malfoy?"

"I've found a perfectly lovely visual aid. I think it'll be loads of help."

There was something about the way he said that particularly sentence that she didn't care for. "What is it?" she asked warily.

"Well, you like Muggle things, don't you? Hasn't your father been toiling valiantly away for lo, these many years at the Division of Muggle Artifacts and bringing home all sorts of free toys for the Weasley progeny? Didn't you greet each oddity with shouts of fresh joy?"

He hadn't actually said anything insulting on the subject, so Ginny supposed that he did deserve some sort of credit for making what must have been a considerable effort. "What's your point, Malfoy?"

In answer, he turned and snapped his fingers. "Pinky! Bring in the dignity Frisbee disc recorder or, oh—whatever it's called; you know what I mean. There's a good elf."

"But of course, Junior Minister Malfoy. Ai will be in raight away," came the elf's nasal voice over the desk speaker. A few moments later, she wheeled in a metal cart with a large television set and handed Draco a remote control. He punched randomly at buttons for several minutes as Ginny sat with folded arms. Finally, a picture flickered and then came to life on the screen.

A tall, pale man with a disturbingly fluffy head of hair turned from an easel and smiled. "Hi," he said in a soft, gentle voice that reminded Ginny distinctly of the time she'd got into Molly Weasley's bottle of Muggle tranquilizers when she was twelve years old. She'd ended up quite ill. But surely this couldn't be… oh, no, it _wouldn't_ be…

"I'm Bob Ross. And welcome to the joy of painting!"

It was.

"No!" she groaned.

"But he says he's television's favorite art instructor," pointed out Draco.

"No, no, no," she moaned in agony.

"I can't imagine why you're getting so upset. Apparently, all you need is the desire to make beautiful things happen on canvas, or so he claims." Draco peered at the landscape of clouds, mountains, and trees pictured on the screen. "Of course, I don't know if I'd quite say that the art in question seems precisely beautiful to me. Marcus Flint was very fond of a certain spell during sixth year that he rather vaguely described as the _Lysergic Acid_ charm, and he'd outline certain visions experienced during the process, frequently in far more agonizing detail than any of us wanted to know, I might add. They were remarkably similar to the pictured scene, as I recall."

"Malfoy. _Please._" Ginny began to curl into a fetal position, involuntarily. "Stop it. I'm begging you."

Draco bent down towards her. "But we've been having so much trouble in coming up with anything, Weasley. And with the fantastic Bob Ross Wet-on-Wet Technique® and a little dedicated practice, masterpieces that you never dreamed possible will flow from your brush."

"All right, Malfoy. I'm no longer begging you. I'm _warning_ you." Ginny sat up very straight, fire in her eyes.

"But it's a money-back guarantee. If we order now, they'll throw in a _Paint Happy Trees_ T-shirt. Perhaps you could wear it. Only in the privacy of this office, you know. Wait." He began to look rather alarmed. "Now, there's no need to become hysterical. Put down that remote. Would you like a calming draft? _Ow!_"

Luckily, there was a magical first aid kit in the closet, and the damage to Draco's ear was entirely superficial. Unintentional, too. Ginny would have sworn to that. As she left the office that afternoon, however, she was dismally aware that they still hadn't come up with any decent drawings. _At least Bob Ross gets one painting done by the end of each show!_

November 12, 2001

Ginny gave a long, exhausted sigh and collapsed across the desk, narrowly missing overturning a large cup of coffee in the process. The afternoon had been endless. She wasn't even sure what time it was by now, but she did know that the hard chair was digging into her bum, her shoulders were tied up into knots of tension, and her hands hurt from all the drawing and erasing and scrunching up of paper, even as Draco chided her for not saving and reusing it. She just couldn't bear looking at their hideous combined efforts.

"I've got some other ideas, you know," said Draco. He played with his wand between two of his fingers. His large, long, knobbly fingers. Ginny tried to avoid looking at them. She was utterly exhausted, and her defenses were at their lowest ebb, she knew.

"What ?" she asked guardedly.

"How about a Tracing spell?"

"There's nothing to trace. The original drawings were rubbish, and the replacement statues are worse."

"Sculpting by numbers. I'll bet that would work."

Ginny stared at him. "Malfoy, what on earth are you talking about?"

"Well, I was trapped on the Marquise de Sade's private jet from Paris to Milan one evening last month, and of course that's always horribly uncomfortable. He doesn't even have proper refreshments, and the reading material is years out of date. He says it's the little tortures that count the most… well, anyway, I was reduced to perusing copies of Witches' Digest, if you can bear to imagine it."Draco shuddered.

"Is there a point to this story, or are you just delirious from lack of sleep?" The shadows under his eyes were darker than ever, Ginny realized. Had his face ever looked that pale before?

"Yes, there's a point, if you'd allow me to get to it. There was an advertisement in the back for a complete paint-by-numbers set. For the low, low price of only nine galleons, I could have recreated Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Bedtime Snack."

Maybe he really was delirious. "Malfoy, it's The Last Supper."

"Oh. I thought that didn't sound quite right… Anyway, a terribly creative thought occurred to me. If there's such a thing as paint-by-numbers, then why not sculpt-by-numbers as well? Couldn't we assemble a load of marble blocks, and then—"

Ginny interrupted him. "No, we couldn't, Malfoy. Sweet Circe, is this your version of a bunch of good ideas? I'd hate to see the bad ones."

Draco tapped his fingers against the desk. Tap, tap. Tap tap tap. Ginny couldn't take her eyes off them. "How about conceptual art?" he asked.

"Mmm?" Tap. Tap. His fingers really were enormous.

"We could give out programs containing directions to the new fountain sculptures. However, they wouldn't actually exist."

"Oh. Yes." His knuckles were just so large.

Draco shot her a keen glance. "Are you listening to me?"

"Mm-hmm." Ginny looked down at her own hand, small and strong. It lay only a few inches from his. Her cramped fingers would curve into his. He would cover them completely, massaging, working out all the knots and tension, and she would relax into him, letting him encircle her, protect her… I'm very, very tired, she realized in a moment of clarity. I should go home.

"Or perhaps we could demolish the hideous sculptures existing now," mused Draco, "and then put up a plaque labeled Erased Rubbish. Very Robert Rauschenberg."

"Right," said Ginny, not having heard a word he had said.

"We could allow viewers to create their own art, and that way we wouldn't need to bother with any of it. That's another idea which occurred to me. We could publish little books containing a series of instructions for how to obtain an aesthetic experience, and hand them out to each Ministry visitor as they entered the atrium. I do so enjoy Heuristic art. Don't you?"

"What?" Ginny blinked. "Sorry, Malfoy. I suppose I, er, wasn't really listening."

"Weasley, Weasley," he chided her. "How do you know I wasn't' saying something dreadfully important?"

She glanced up into his silvery eyes, but they were like mirrors, giving nothing away. Then he smiled.

"Actually, I was saying that I don't see how I can make any sort of intelligent contribution to our mutual work until I've got some sort of basic understanding of art. And I don't, you know."

Ginny looked at him sharply. She was in an absolute haze of exhaustion, but something just seemed…. Off. Still, his smile was innocent and bland. "You don't know anything at all?" she asked.

"Not a thing." He leaned across the desk. "Weasley, you've simply got to start those art lessons you promised me. I don't see how we're ever going to get anywhere otherwise."

The smell of him drifted across the bit of space between them, fresh and clean, complex and spicy, and always, always, that haunting, irresistible undertone of chocolate. Ginny wanted to lean in, to sniff deeper and deeper, to find where it was coming from, to seek it out, to smell and taste and—

She drew back, abruptly. She was tired. Horribly tired. That was all. "Not right now, Malfoy," she said.

The moment that Ginny's head touched the pillow, of course, her eyes snapped open, and she was wide awake. It was the right decision, she told herself as she tossed and turned in her narrow bed that night. It had to be. She couldn't give Draco Malfoy art lessons. She pictured herself sitting next to him with a large book, turning page after page of art, their heads pressed closely together. No. Too dangerous. She saw them standing together in a gallery, studying paintings and sculptures, standing very close. She was watching every flicker of emotion on his face, every change in his body as he learned about art, grew to appreciate it. She groaned. I can't. But oh gods, those drawings we're coming up with!

Ginny saw herself and Draco standing in front of a painting framed in glass, a landscape, or—no—a portrait, showing the range of emotions on a human face. She wouldn't be able to hide everything that she felt. And maybe he wouldn't, either. It wouldn't, couldn't be safe. She shrank back from the thought. And then she saw Astoria Malfoy stepping up behind them, her narrow, malicious face mirrored in the glass.

Ginny sat bolt upright with a muffled scream. Then she cursed, punched her pillow, and tried unsuccessfully to go to sleep. This just can't go on, she thought. Something's got to happen. But… but what? And then she did fall asleep, and into uneasy dreams of wriggling away from whispering snakes slithering down long, narrow pipes into subterranean darkness, searching for someone she couldn't find. Draco, Draco, she kept calling, and she knew that somewhere in the darkness, he was searching for her too. And there was something that she had forgotten, something terribly important, perhaps the most important thing of all. But she could never find what it was. And by the time she had woken up, she didn't remember the dream at all.


	64. The Vanishing

A/N: Thanks to all the readers and reviewers!

Oh, but the next few chapters are fun... lots of good stuff coming up. :)

+++  
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.  
_- Bertrand Russell_

Ginny squinted at the dull, gunmetal-grey sun stabbing through the chintz curtains over the breakfast table. She stirred her cornflakes slowly in the white china bowl, staring down at them. First one way, then the other. They swirled in a pattern that disturbed her. She didn't remember her dream from last night. Not really. And yet… _I saw a pattern just like that last night. Where? It was hanging in the air. I was running through mists. Was that it? Yes. But where was I going? Why was I running? A flash of something. Silvery-blond. What? The back of someone's head. Oh, Merlin! Draco Malfoy!_

Ginny pushed back her chair abruptly. The cornflakes had become a soggy, grayish mush, like clouds of thick fog.

She glanced out the window, tugging a brush through her hair, wincing as she pulled at a knot. Her head was beginning to throb with a dull sort of headache that seemed to match the gray rain slanting through the bare branches of the trees along the street outside. _Looks like one of those days when maybe I really ought to just go back to bed,_ she thought. The idea was very appealing.

A sudden gust of wind blew rain against the windowpane. It swirled sideways in a pattern that took her breath away. She stared at it as if trying to find the answer to a question that had been asked, surely it _must_ have been asked already last night in that dream as she ran and ran through the mists, trying to reach that bright head retreating relentlessly from her—

Ginny scowled at herself in the mirror, rummaging for an umbrella. "What a dreadfully unattractive look, dear," the silvery surface twittered. "I'd think you'd try to put your prettiest face forward, personally. Seeing as how you're meeting with Junior Minister Malfoy, and all."

"How'd you know that?" Ginny exclaimed.

"Oh, I had the loveliest chat with the Ministry lift yesterday, simply lovely," said the mirror. "She had ever so much to say about the new Junior Minister. Such a polite young man. So very charming. So extremely agreeable—"

"And so completely married!" said Ginny. "And if he ever cheats on Astoria Malfoy, let me tell you, it won't be with an inanimate object."

"Perhaps not," said the mirror slyly. "But we know plenty of things that you flesh-and-bloods don't. The things we see and hear… oh, I could tell you tidbits about Draco Malfoy that would turn your hair to corkscrew curls. Although that's not necessary. It's got such pretty waves already, dear." The surface helpfully turned to show her the back of her head.

"Whatever are you talking about?" asked Ginny.

"Never mind, never mind," said the mirror. "I've already said far more than I ought. It's part of the Inamin's code, you see—we rarely tell anything we know, and we never tell enough to make any sense."

"_Inamins?_ No, you're certainly _not_ making any sense! What do you know about Draco Malfoy? Tell me, or I'll—"

The mirror cowered back slightly. Ginny saw that she had raised her hand in a rather threatening way. Feeling ashamed of herself, she dropped it. "I'm sorry," she said. "I wasn't actually going to _do_ anything."

"Only because it's seven years' bad luck, I suppose," the mirror said pitifully.

"No, really," said Ginny. "It would have been very unkind. But you've got to see how frustrating it is to be given only a hint, and then nothing more."

"Oh, I do," said the mirror. "And I'd tell you more if I could, but I can't. It's my nature not to, you see. All of us Inamins are made that way."

Ginny thought about that. "I suppose it's even more frustrating to be Draco Malfoy's watch. Imagine being worn on his wrist morning, noon, and night, but always knowing that you'll never get any closer to him than that."

"Too, too true. I feel _so_ dreadfully badly for poor Tempiana Timepiece," sighed the mirror. "I'm not at all sure how she's kept from going quite mad. She's belonged to him since he was fifteen years old, and some of the things she's seen; oh dear, oh my dear. Still, she's remained loyal, unlike _some_ I could name-" The mirror shut her mouth tight. Ginny herself wasn't at all sure how this was possible when a mirror didn't have a mouth, but it had clearly happened.

_I suppose she means that Malfoy's rubber duckie tattled on him as a child,_ thought Ginny. "It's all right," she sighed. "I know you can't tell me. I do think I understand a bit better now."

"That's nice. Because it's so very soothing to be understood," said the mirror. "Even a little."

Ginny gave the mirror a pat. "You know, I think I'm glad I didn't replace all my—what is it? Inamins?—with Muggle objects after all."

The problem, of course, was that she still had to leave the flat and face Draco Malfoy before the hour was up. Ginny stood at the door, holding her umbrella in one hand and a waterproof bag filled with sketchbooks in the other. Each was filled with drawings that were utter rubbish, she knew. _Are drawings Inanims as well? I feel awfully sorry for them, if so. These can't be happy ones. Deep breaths, Ginny. Don't be a coward. Just open that door and get down to the Ministry._ The brass surface was cool and slippery under her hand. She should just turn it. Why wasn't it turning? What could be worse than Bob Ross, after all? Of course, she _did_ have a sort of a vague memory of seeing little pictures of turtle heads on the back of Muggle matchbook covers. There was some sort of offer on the other side, if she remembered correctly, and she was all too afraid that she did. Malfoy would probably hand her one as soon as she walked into his office. She could hear his cool, sarcastic drawl now.

"Take a look at this, Weasley. I do believe we've found the answer at last. 'How to draw Toby the Turtle in only Three Easy Lessons at the Copacabana College of Art and Design.' Why, we'll make _all_ of the fountain statues into turtles. Let's enroll today!"

Ginny set her jaw and opened the door, fully intending to clatter down the stairs as if the wind itself was chasing her. Instead, she ran smack into an eagle owl.

_It's the Malfoy owl,_ she thought before even unrolling the parchment. _It's got to be._ She wasn't completely sure how she knew. It might have been the way it held out the roll of expensive cream-laid linen to her by the very tips of its well-manicured claws, or the haughty sniff it gave when she offered it an owl treat. She could have sworn that the owl raised an eyebrow as soon as it saw her, and she was pretty sure that owls didn't even _have_ eyebrows. She scowled at the dark, slanting backhand.

_Weasley—_

Don't bother coming into the Ministry today. Something arose unexpectedly, and I won't be there. Do me a favor, all right? Stay home. Take a day quite thoroughly off from art of any sort. Think of it as a sort of palate-clearing exercise. Who knows? Perhaps you can actually salvage the project that way.

Best of luck,

D.M.  


The curt, dismissive tone set her teeth on edge. It was _so_ like him. Perversely, it made her want to go in and work on the sketches by herself. Half of them were in his office anyway, so it wouldn't do any good to stay home. When she stepped out onto the street, the Malfoy owl was hanging about the entrance. It tried to flap its wings at her with an odd urgency, but she gave it a murderous look, and it flew away. _I wonder what on earth that was about,_ she thought as she Apparated to the Ministry. _Maybe it thought I had better owl treats up my sleeve._

Ginny stopped briefly in the Atrium and forced herself to stand in front of the fountain statues. She could have _sworn_ their expressions had changed so that they were starting to mock her. She squinted at the soppy-looking witch. _Maybe she really is tossing off the wizard under his robes. Damn Malfoy for planting that idea in my head. I'll never get it out now. But at least they look like they're having fun, which is more than I can say for anything I've drawn yet._ She walked round the statues, examining them critically. _The composition is good. I wonder why, considering that everything else is such rubbish._ She glanced down at the base, frowning. It looked the same as the one she'd seen in the sketches of the last set of sculptures for the Fountain of Magical Brethren, the one that had been destroyed in the war. She bent down and examined the marble, noting how much older it was than the rest of the stone. _They must always use the same foundation,_ she realized. _Every time a new set of sculptures gets put in, it's just built over the old foundation. So even back in 1942, that's what they did. It's always been the same one…_ She shivered. What _was_ it about that thought that nagged at her so much?

A clerk from one of the subfiling departments walked past her on the other side of the fountain. He paused, and gave her a fleeting glance. Was there something strange about his expression? Ginny wondered briefly about it, but then he passed her, and she decided it was unimportant. She was starting to make her way back towards the lift when she saw a blur of brown hair out of the corner of her eye. Whoever owned that head of hair was definitely coming at her. She grabbed a stray copy of a _Daily Prophet_ lying on a bench and held it up to hid most of her face, ducking behind a pillar for good measure. Footsteps crept up towards her. She groaned silently. _Where's a good Invisibility cloak when you really need one? I ought to have stolen that one Harry had, years ago, and never mind that it belonged to the magical legendary brother of the trio in the fairy tale that inspired Grindelwald to do whatever it was, or, well, who the fuck actually _understood_ any of that rubbish, anyway-_

A strong hand clamped onto her arm. "Psst!"

She sighed in relief. "Colin! What's with the cloak-and-dagger shite? You almost scared me to death. I thought you were Hermione."

"Scoot over, would you?" He plopped down on the bench next to her. "I don't know why you seem to think we're starring in some sort of spy-vs-spy drama. Who covered her face and then hid behind a marble pillar? Hmm?"

"Then why are you whispering?"

"Oh." Colin looked uncomfortable. "That. No reason. Why don't you go home, Gin? You look all in. Have you been sleeping lately?"

"Don't turn into another Ron. One's enough. And I'm sleeping fine," lied Ginny. "I've got work to do today, Colly. Don't you have something as well?"

"Of course I do. You don't think I just sit around twiddling my thumbs all day long because you don't have any art-assisting on tap for me at the moment, do you? I'm helping Tony up in the New Factory. Luna's there all the time, too, and she wants you to visit dreadfully. Why don't you, Gin? Only not today," Colin added hurriedly.

"I will soon," Ginny said evasively. She knew exactly why she hadn't been seeing much of Luna lately. She couldn't bear to watch her friend's happiness with Blaise Zabini. She writhed with the fear that this meant she was selfish and small-hearted and mean, and she hated herself for it. But all she could think was that Blaise was Draco Malfoy's best friend, and that seeing that reminder might wrench open doors she had to keep tightly hammered shut.

"That sounds like a wonderful idea," said Colin. "Tomorrow. You'll love the way Andy's set the whole thing up, Gin. It's a sort of modern-day rendition of a good old-fashioned Renaissance art studio, art assistants and pretty-boys positively as far as the eye can see. I wonder if you'd like something like that in your own studio some day? Perhaps we could put an Expanding charm on it… Well, anyway, never mind." He put a hand on her back, urging her up. Ginny realized that he had been talking faster and faster. "Now let's get you home!"

Ginny resisted the pressure of his hand. "I don't want to go home, Colly! I have to go to Malfoy's office and start wrestling with these sketches again."

Colin paled slightly. "No! I mean, er, no, I really think you look like you're starting to become ill. The flu's going round, you know."

"Not that I've heard," said Ginny, heading determinedly towards the lift.

"Why don't you just go home and get to bed?" Colin kept plucking at her arm. "You could put your pajamas back on. I always loved doing that when I stayed home from school. I could come over and make some hot cocoa a bit later. I could—"

"You could bloody well let _go_ of me, Colly," Ginny said through clenched teeth. People crowded round the lift were beginning to give them sidelong looks. Or had they been doing that all along? She wasn't at all sure anymore.

"Look, I'm only trying to help," Colin said, a rather desperate tone in his voice. "You'd be terribly appreciative if you only understood—"

"Understood _what_?" demanded Ginny.

"Oh dear," said Colin.

"_What's going on?_"

"I never was very good at keeping secrets, you know. I've never claimed to be. And that was never a Gryffindor-ish quality, either. It's not as if anybody can blame me—"

"Colin Christopher Creevey!" snapped Ginny. "Exactly what the fuck are you talking about?"

He gulped. The lift door opened, and he darted through the doors, pulling Ginny with him. "Er…" He twisted his hands together. "Well, first you've got to understand, Gin, that I didn't want you mixed up in this thing, because it really might turn out to be an _awful_ thing; I don't really know yet and neither does anybody else. And then you've got to understand that I didn't want you to see it in the papers. Because, um…"

"The story's appalling," said the creamy voice of the lift. It seemed to tremble on the verge of tears. "Why does that horrible Skeeter woman have to torment him so? Why can't she just leave him alone?"

"_Him_? You mean there's a Rita Skeeter story about…" The question died on Ginny's lips. She been about to ask who, but when the lift began to sob, she knew.

"Oh, shite, what's Malfoy done now?" she groaned.

"Nothing," sniffed the lift. "He hasn't done a thing; I'm sure of it. It's only that horrible woman's lies."

"I'm, uh, sure it is," said Ginny as soothingly as she could, stepping on Colin's foot as he opened his mouth. "But I can't help him unless I know what the story said."

"I suppose you _do_ need to see it- if you can even bear to read such trash. I'm not at all sure how _I_ managed it."

"I didn't know that lifts could read," Colin whispered in Ginny's ear.

"Shut it," she whispered back, catching a copy of the _Daily Prophet_ as it dropped from the ceiling.

"I do so wish everyone would stop saying that to me these days," said Colin.

Ginny ignored him and flipped the paper open to the gossip page. Rita Skeeter simpered at her, flourishing a Quick-Quotes Quill.

_Malfoy Vamooses, Nixes Ministry Pix  
Was the dubious-yet-delectable Draco Malfoy's alleged reformation simply a sham? That's been the malicious question on everyone's lips since his mysterious reappearance in London two weeks ago, and it seems that the catty rumours to that effect just may have been correct all along. Certain unnamed sources claim that the sketches for the new Fountain of Magical Brethren aren't of a caliber to merit use for lining flobberworm cages, and really, after seeing a leaked copy, this author has to agree. _

_Leaked copy!_ Ginny's mouth fell open as she stared at the reproduced sketch. It was a particularly appallingly bad one that she and Draco had done on the day of the Bob Ross videos, and "Happy Trees" were involved. Numbly, she kept reading.

_One would think that up-and-coming artist Ginny Weasley could churn out a better collaboration than this, but then, it looks as if she'll get her chance. At nine o'clock sharp this morning, Astoria Malfoy, Draco's teddibly high-society wife, informed this reporter that he'll be playing the part of the devoted husband for the next full fortnight—and apparently, there won't be so much as a teentsy-weentsy moment to spare for much of anything else._

"Draco will be heading up a number of committees for the upcoming Pureblood Regency Ball," she said over tea and scones. "Of course he's happy to do it. I need his help desperately—it's far more important than this silly little artistic project. I'm sure that Weasley can manage that by herself, can't she?" The devious Draco was not available for comment.

Hard luck all round for our spunky artist, I'd say. Of course, this'll be far from the first time that the jejune Ginny's been taken appalling advantage of by le Malfoy—but that's another story! And you can bet your bottom Galleon that your enterprising reporter will get you the skinny on all upcoming events. Till then, I remain your very own Rita—Ginny! Don't! I'm only doing my job, you know!

Grimly, Ginny scrunched the paper into the smallest possible ball and then stomped on it.

"I'm _so_ glad you did that," sighed the lift. "I certainly would have done, but then, I don't have any feet."

Ginny walked out as quickly as she could the moment that the doors opened, dragging Colin along with her. If she opened her mouth, she thought, she was sure to say something about Draco Malfoy that would cause the lift to send them all plummeting to the basement in a deadly free-fall.

"Gin, come on. Gin, _really_," said Colin. "Gin, do try to think for just a moment before flying thoroughly off the broom handle, please. That little poison-pen production was written by Rita Skeeter. Why on earth would you uncritically accept that?"

The lift had let them out directly in front of the corridor that led to Draco's office, Ginny saw. She stopped in an alcove. "You certainly don't need to tell me what a poisonous bitch Skeeter is," she said. "But don't try to tell me that she got everything entirely wrong, either, because I simply won't believe you for a moment. How the hell did she manage to lay hands on that sketch, Colly?"

"I… well, that does look bad," Colin admitted. "But for all we know, everything else is a lie from beginning to end—"

"Oh? Then where's Malfoy?"

"Er… yes, that's a bit of a problem. But wait, Gin, wait. Astoria is Skeeter's main source of information. Are you really going to tell me that you trust _her_ version of the truth? Maybe she's holding her husband in the closet right now, and he's actually trying desperately to get to you, and he's tapping out a pitiful message in Morse code right this instant except only a rat can hear it and—"

Ginny dug Draco's note out of her pocket and thrust it under Colin's nose. She watched his face fall as he read it.

"Oh," he said. "Uh...Gin, is it true that the sketching process wasn't going particularly well?"

"You saw that photo. It was a disaster," she said. She turned away, looking through the sliver of window into Draco's empty office. "Maybe it all makes sense, Colly. Maybe he really _did_ choose to end it this way. He saw that it wasn't going to work, that we'd never come up with anything. But…"

"But what?" Colin watched her keenly.

_But I can't believe that it would have happened like this. I just can't._

"Gin…" Colin hesitated. "Let's say that the worst happened. Malfoy chose to cut his losses, and he vamoosed to the safety of Pureblood Ball preparations. Can the Ministry get at him there, by the way?"

Ginny shook her head. "I don't see how. The Ball is absolutely sacred, and it's a good deal older than the Ministry. It's protected by the most primal sort of magic…." Her voice trailed off as her heart sank. "Harry couldn't touch him as long as he really was helping to prepare for it," she said dully. "It really _does_ make sense. It's the cleverest thing Malfoy could possibly do. So he did do it, didn't he?"

"We don't know that yet," Colin said firmly. "But, er, _if_ he did… well…" He looked at her earnestly. "Gin, just letting him go might be the wisest thing you could possibly do."

She was silent, because she knew that he was right.

"Would you?" he asked.

Ginny would never be sure if her answer would have been yes or no, if she had hesitated for even a little longer. She never knew, either, which answer she really would have meant, in that moment. Still, she always knew which answer her heart would have given, because that was a reply that would never change.

But in that moment, while she did hesitate, poised on the edge of an answer that she never had a chance to give, a small figure came hurrying down the corridor. Both of them turned to see who it was.

"Oh, fuck," muttered Colin.

_Oh, fuck indeed,_ thought Ginny, without any sense of surprise. She turned to face the other girl fully.

"We might as well get this over with," she said. "What do you want, Hermione?"


	65. In Search of Draco

A/N: Thanks to all the readers and reviewers, especially the fabulous Aeirileigh. This chapter is when the cuts really start to happen, and I think it all makes for a much better DDD!

_Chapter 65_

Hermione twisted her hands together for a moment, a strangely unsure look on her face.

"We could both go home and get in our footed pyjamas, you know," Colin whispered to Ginny out of the corner of his mouth. "It's bound to be more productive than listening to anything _she_ has to say. Oh, all right, all right! I'll just go on and tell myself. Shut it, Colin Creevey."

Ginny couldn't help wondering exactly what Hermione would say to that, but she didn't even look at Colin when she finally did speak. "I've got something of yours, Ginny. I'd like to give it back to you."

"What on earth could you possibly be talking about, Hermione?"

In answer, Hermione handed her something. Ginny felt how cold the other girl's fingers were, and how faintly they trembled. She frowned when she opened her palm and saw Professor Goonie's face grinning vacantly up at her. _Grand Opening Day—50% Off All Non-Lethal Gags!_

"This is just one of those novelty coins that George had made up for the joke shop expansion last year. What's going on?"

"Nothing," said Hermione. "I only wanted to give it back to you."

Ginny glanced at Colin, who shrugged his shoulders at her. "Is that all?" she asked Hermione. "Only we're rather busy."

"That's all."

"Then I think you'd better leave. Don't you?" snapped Ginny.

That was a rather strong hint, she thought. But Hermione stayed where she was, looking indecisive. She took one step towards Ginny and stumbled, falling almost to her knees with a cry of pain. Ginny set her teeth. Part of her simply wanted to walk off, dragging Colin with her, and leave Hermione lying there. But the other girl's dark eyes were filled with agony, and against her will, Ginny saw, for only a moment, a flash of the old Hermione, the one who had been her true friend. She sighed and bent down.

"What have you done now, Hermione? Do I have to go and find a Healer to splint your ankle, or something?"

Hermione pulled Ginny down by the shoulder. Then she began to speak very rapidly, her voice low and urgent. "Listen. This has to be quick. We don't know who might be listening here. Get out of this part of the Ministry, Ginny. It isn't safe. Don't leave the Ministry itself. But get right out of sight. Hurry." She raised her voice again. "I think I'm all right, Ginny. I just twisted my ankle a bit, that's all."

Then she got to her feet and hurried off down the corridor, before Ginny had any chance to respond.

"Are you angling for a Gryffindor Girl Guide badge?" asked Colin, at her side. "Because personally, Gin, I would've broken her _other_ ankle."

"Shut it, Colly," said Ginny, watching Hermione disappear around a corner.

"Oh, so we're going to start that again. You didn't even give me a proper chance to do it myself, you know. For all you know, I might have learned my lesson by now. Am I just wearing a sign on my forehead that reads, 'Tell Colin Creevey to Shut His Fucking Mouth At Every Conceivable Opportunity?' Because it certainly would go a long way towards explaining the mystery of why everyone constantly feels free to—"

Ginny clamped her hand down his wrist and started dragging. "Let's get the hell out of here. _Now_."

She stopped once they were in the front foyer. Although she highly doubted that it was one bit better, at least it was empty. Even Pinkie was nowhere to be seen.

"What was that about?" asked Colin, rubbing his wrist.

"Shh!" Ginny pulled his head down and whispered in his ear. "Look, I really don't know. But for what it's worth, Hermione told me that it isn't safe here. She told me—us—to get out."

Colin gave a long, low whistle. "Hermione said that? But why?"

"Don't whistle like that! It's a very suspicious sort of sound. I can't imagine anybody whistling innocently, Colly. Anyway, she told me that this part of the Ministry isn't safe, and—" Ginny forced herself to say the words. "Could she be right? Our sketch leaked to Skeeter somehow, after all."

Colin gnawed on his lower lip. "But how?"

"I have no idea. Colly, we can't keep whispering like this." Ginny cast a fearful look up at the ceiling. "That's absolutely got to look suspicious as well."

"We could go back to your flat after all. I haven't given up on that pyjama idea yet. I could make hot cocoa—"

"No!" exclaimed Ginny. She cleared her throat. "I mean, no, I don't want to do that," she said much more quietly, and rather lamely.

"But what are we supposed to do, then?" demanded Colin. "And how do we know that Harry and all the Aurors and the entire Department of Mysteries aren't lurking behind every pillar in the place, just waiting to jump us the first chance they get?"

"I don't know what to think anymore," admitted Ginny. "I don't trust Hermione as far as I could throw her. And she did tell me to stay in the Ministry itself, just to get out of this wing."

Colin paused, and Ginny groaned silently. He was getting that cunning look on his face… "Maybe that's all the more reason why we'd be better off dodging whatever's about to go down, Gin. And we've got the opportunity to do it. Don't get that stubborn Weasley-ish look to your jaw. You know it's true. Comfy pyjamas might be right out, but why don't we lift a leaf from Malfoy's book and just get out while the getting's good?"

"Colly, I just—" Ginny hesitated. "I don't know what I want to do. I haven't made up my mind yet."

"You can't very well have a nice leisurely think around here," said Colin. "I'd trust Hermione this far—we shouldn't stay where we are now. Come on, Gin. Let's get out."

"Sometimes I really don't know how the hell you ended up in Gryffindor," she muttered.

"If by that lovely comment you mean that I care about the safety of my dearest friend in all the world," said Colin, "then I don't know either, and I really don't care. School days are long over, Gin." He looked at her seriously. "I don't hate Malfoy the way that Ron does. I feel rather sorry for him, actually. I think he's dug an appalling hole for himself, and I doubt he'll ever get out of it again. But I won't simply stand by and watch you dragged down with him."

Ginny swallowed hard. "I wouldn't ask you to."

"So what _are_ you going to do?"

"Are you going to tell me that if he really has buggered off to Pureblood Ball preparations, then I ought to just let him go?" Ginny countered.

"No, because that would just egg you on to pursue him. Still, I do wonder if you would do it. You should, you know."

"No," said Ginny without hesitation.

"Is it because of… ah-er-um?" Colin looked uncomfortable.

"No, it isn't!" She scowled at him. Then they both heard the clattering noise down the corridor.

_I was right last time, when we were all under St. Mungo's,_ thought Ginny. _Colin really does have freckles. It's just that I can't see them unless all the blood's drained from his face out of sheer terror_.

"Oh, shite," he squeaked.

Ginny glanced up, and saw what—and—who he had seen. _I really _don't_ know how Colin got into Gryffindor, sometimes,_ she thought rather calmly, and then she pulled him round the corner and darted the other way, praying that Harry hadn't seen either one of them.

"What are we running for?" moaned Colin. "It's—too late—"

"Oh, no it's not," Ginny said grimly. "Colly, think. He wasn't even looking in our direction. This way, come on!" And he hadn't been, she thought. Those blazing emerald eyes had been focused on something else, _someone_ else, and she thought she knew who it was. For the first time in many years, she actually felt a trace of pity for Hermione.

"Where are we—going? You'd better have a plan."

"I do. A good one. Colly, he must've been trying to find Hermione."

"How do we know? And where are we going, anyway? It's not as if—anywhere's—safe. Maybe we could—appeal to Harry for mercy, or—something—"

"He doesn't have any, so shut it, Colly!"

"You're going to kill me," Colin moaned as they half-ran down the corridor.

"You'd deserve it. Dean was right. You do need to get more exercise. Hurry up, or he really will catch us!" She yanked him into the lift just as the doors were closing. Then she leaned against the wall with a sigh of relief.

"The lift! I didn't think of that," said Colin, as soon as he could speak again. By that time, Ginny thought uncharitably, Harry might have easily stationed guards at every single floor. If he really wasn't just looking for Hermione. Was he, though? And really… what does it mean if he was? They could still be in on it together. It could be nothing more than a trick. But then, why would she have told us anything at all… She shook her head. None of it made any sense, and they had more than enough problems to be going on with as it was.

"Yes, well, we almost didn't make it," she said.

"I know." Colin looked contrite. "I'm awfully sorry. I'll go into training right away. If we ever get out of this, that is."

She hugged his shoulder. "We could just stay on the lift forever, I suppose."

"I could arrange afternoon tea service," mused the lift. "Only I'm not at all sure what you'd manage for a loo."

Ginny shuddered. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Er… Miss Lift…?"

"Call me Loftia. All of my friends do."

"Okay. Loftia, then. Are we…" Ginny tried to think. "Are we safe for now?"

"Oh, yes. As long as your interests lie in the direction of helping Draco Malfoy, of course." Loftia looked down at her keenly. _How odd that it's so easy to tell when inanimate objects are doing things like that_, thought Ginny.

"Yes, I can see that you are," said Loftia. "Quite clearly. Although… ah, yes… I'm not at all sure you know it yourself, as of yet. Our interests lie in the same direction, then, because I'm entirely loyal to him."

"That must be awfully nice," said Colin. "I do wish I could get certain inanimate objects about my flat to obey my every wish, such as… er… oh, never mind." He cupped his hands and called up at the ceiling. "Will they all do that?"

"You're not the least bit loyal to Draco Malfoy," said Loftia. "I have nothing to say to _you_."

"I like that," said Colin. "Snubbed by a lift."

"Hush, Colly." Ginny felt more unsettled than ever, but tried not to let it show. "Loftia, are _all_ of the, uh, Inanims loyal to Malfoy?"

"Not all Inanims have become real," said Loftia. "You'll have heard of the Velveteen rabbit."

"I remember the book," said Ginny said. "A child loved a stuffed rabbit, and it became real… did Malfoy ever have a rabbit like that?"

"He had a teddy bear once, when he was five years old," the lift said softly. "But it doesn't take only love to make Inanims real. It can be kindness, or compassion, or even hatred. And sometimes, nobody knows why. But almost all of Draco Malfoy's Inanims are loyal to him."

"I haven't met one yet who isn't," said Ginny.

The lift was silent.

"Hello?" called Colin.

"Shush!" Ginny frowned. "Loftia? Does that mean there really is one who's not?"

The lift sighed deeply. "Ginny, I do wish I could tell you. But I simply can't."

She felt a sudden chill. "There is one. You don't have to say yes or no, Loftia. I know it's got to be true."

"Well, it's all right if you figure it out on your own," said the loft, clearly sounding relieved. "It's just that I can't come right out and say it. All Inanims are bound by certain tiresome rules, you see, and no matter how much I might yearn to break them, well…"

"You can't," said Ginny. "I know—my mirror explained that to me this morning."

"Specula's such a dear," said the lift, nodding her _its?_ head? _How the hell is that even possible?_ wondered Ginny.

"But which one?" asked Ginny. "Oh, bother, you can't say- Colin, help me out here."

"But apparently I'm not loyal enough to Malfoy," said Colin. "I don't think the lift wants any of my help."

"Oh, Colly, please, don't get in a snit," said Ginny. "_I_ need your help. Anyway, isn't there a sort of transitive property in maths? If I'm loyal to Malfoy, and Colin's loyal to me, than his loyalty sort of slops over?"

"I suppose that'll do." The lift shrugged. _I'm not even going to try to figure out how that sort of thing is happening anymore_, Ginny decided.

"I really don't feel the love here," said Colin. "But Ginny, let's put our heads together. What sort of Inanim might not be so loyal? Something along the lines of… say, a shirt, or a cufflink, or a pair of trousers?"

Ginny looked away, blushing slightly. "Um… no. Everything that Malfoy's actually worn has been quite loyal, from what I've seen."

"Yes, I think we can scratch trousers off the list as a possibility," Colin said dryly. "I'm not at all sure what I was thinking. What about Inanims that he only uses? Does he turn the Malfoy charm on all of them?"

"Well, you can guess how he behaves towards the lift," said Ginny. "You should see the way he handles pencils. And charcoal sticks…" _Best not to even go there,_ she thought. She was sure that her blush was deepening. "In fact, I don't think there's a single thing that he hasn't—" She stopped. A memory was coming back to her from only a few days before.

"_Really, Weasley, you're being rather ridiculous, don't you think? There's no point working in the corridor when I've got a perfectly good desk just a few yards away." His voice grew silkier, more persuasive._

"Oh, so you're going to start in on your desk next?" she demanded. "It wasn't enough to seduce your watch and the Ministry lift?"

"Goodness. Maybe you really _are__ delirious. I'm sure you've got a fever. Here. Let me feel—" He reached out his hand for her forehead.__ She'd batted it away._

She and Draco had been spending hours every day for two weeks working on it. He'd drawn on it, unrolled parchments on it, leaned over it, propped his elbows on it, laid his head down on it, shoved her under it, sat on it, and on one occasion, sprawled across it in order to point out Bob Ross's flair with drawing Happy Trees. But he'd never, ever tried to seduce it. The resentment that must have built up in that thing! Ginny groaned.

"It's that huge old mahogany desk in his office. Isn't it? That's the disloyal Inanim."

"You're so very clever, Ginny," said Loftia. "I knew you'd figure it out. And Pulpita's always been the most dreadful bitch. But still, I'd go a bit further if I were you…" The loft let her words trail off with the air of leaving something very much still unsaid.

"What do you m- oh, shite," said Ginny. "The desk was the one who passed along that drawing to Rita Skeeter. That's it. Isn't it?"

Again, the lift nodded. Ginny sank to her heels on the floor. "Fuck," she moaned. "You know what this means."

Colin knelt beside her. "Never trust a desk?"

"No!" She gritted her teeth. "It means that Hermione was right. Argh. Colly, it hurt to even say those words. The Ministry of Art and Culture is dangerous now, and we shouldn't go back. There are probably spies everywhere."

Colin heaved a sigh of relief. "It's good to see that you have at least a tiny drop of self-preservation in your veins, Gin. But if you're going to admit that particular department is fraught with danger and we shouldn't set foot in it again, then why should we stay here at all? Do you honestly think that every other square inch of this building is safe as milk?"

"I suppose I don't," said Ginny.

"You're not getting up, Ginny," said Colin. "This is the part where you're supposed to head for the doors. Then we make our daring escape from the Ministry and end up in your flat making cookies and celebrating our narrow escape."

"No, it isn't, and no, we won't," said Ginny.

"I don't like the way this is going," said Colin.

"Too bad," said Ginny. She glanced up at the ceiling. "Er, Loftia? I don't want to hurt your feelings, or anything like that, but the conversation of the next few minutes is going to revolve around Draco Malfoy. Well, not just that… um… me and Draco Malfoy, if you see what I mean. Some details about exactly what's gone on in the past might be involved in the discussion." She looked sheepishly at the lift.

"I'm not the least bit jealous, if that's what you mean," said Loftia. "He can't be with an Inanim. We all know that. He's got to have a flesh-and-blood, and we're all cheering for you, Ginny."

"Thanks. I think."

"Through my amazing psychic powers," said Colin, "I think I've figured out that the reason why you don't want to leave just might have a teentsy-weentsy bit to do with Draco Malfoy."

"Well spotted," said Ginny.

He crossed his arms. "And yet I suppose you're going to tell me yet again that it has nothing to do with _ah-er-um._"

She gave him a long, level look. "I won't explain it all, Colly. I won't explain any of it, really. But I've got to keep Malfoy safe, and myself as well, and so it can't be about—well—that." Ginny pressed her hand to her forehead for a moment, feeling its burning heat, remembering _that,_ in the past, with Draco Malfoy. Only for a moment. "I can't go back to what used to be, with him," she said flatly. "I've come too far. That can never happen again. And it isn't because of that, anyway. It's because of this project. The sketches are appalling, that's all they've ever been so far, but they could be… oh, they could be everything. These sculptures could be the best things I've ever done. And if this keeps up, they won't be. It'll be my fault—well, at least partly—and I'll always know that, because…" What to say, what to say?

"Because I've never yet worked with Malfoy the way I could have done," Ginny finally said. "The way I know I can do. And I can't get them right on her own; I don't know why, but they need to be a collaboration with him, and only with him." She rubbed her face. "I don't know exactly why it's been such a train wreck so far… those art lessons I wouldn't give him, oh, fuck, that's probably it. But I haven't dared. It's too dangerous."

"What are you talking about?" Colin asked cautiously. "Gin? You're not making sense. Are you all right?"

"No," sighed Ginny. "Colin, I've got to find Malfoy."

"How?" asked Colin.

"I don't have any idea at all. Or… no, wait. Maybe I do. Loftia?" Ginny called. "Can you tell us where he is?"

"I'm afraid not," said the lift.

"I suppose you're not allowed. Well, could you give us hints? How about that? And if we guess correctly, maybe you could tell us if we're right?"

"I can't do that, either," said Loftia.

Ginny rubbed her suddenly aching head. "Can you do anything?"

The lift smiled. That was such an unlikely feat that Ginny actually did try to figure out how it was possible. With no warning at all, the car screeched to a shuddering halt. The doors opened, and Colin began moving smoothly towards them, as if carried along by a moving sidewalk.

"Wait. Wait! I can be utterly loyal to Draco Malfoy. Just give me a chance. Gin, this isn't happening of own volition, I swear! I'm really _not_ such as coward as all that. _Gin-_"

The doors closed.

"Your friend will be quite all right, dear," said Loftia. "And a good deal safer this way. Now, I can't _tell _you where Draco is. But I can _bring _you to him."


	66. Love In An Elevator

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers! This is where the revision of DDD really begins. It's still the same story, but a lot of unnecessary stuff has been cut out.

CHAPTER 66  
Ginny closed her eyes. _Oh, thank all the gods! I'll find Draco now, and it'll be all right. _Relief poured all through her.

"Hurry, Loftia," she said.

The lift did not move. A chill went all through her.

"Loftia… what's wrong?" She opened her eyes. They went instantly to the door, even before there was anything to see. She realized later that she had already known what was about to happen.

A hand was prying apart the doors of the lift. She'd seen that strong, square, brown hand before. Many, many times. She remembered when she'd closed her eyes and tilted her head up for a kiss, and felt that hand on the back of her neck, roughly holding her close. She remembered the wand that hand held. Harry's wand, and Harry's hand.

Harry pushed the doors of the lift open. He took in the scene with one glance.

"Where's Hermione?" he demanded.

How perfectly Harry-like that was, thought Ginny. She wondered if he even cared what she was doing there, at that particular moment. Hermione was the only one who mattered to him, for whatever reason, so everything in him was focused only on finding Hermione. She could see it in every line of his body, every trace of tension in his hands, every bit of brilliant green in his eyes. He turned that terrifying stare on her.

"Have you seen her?" Harry asked.

That horrible day back in May, when Harry and the Aurors had caught her in the alley behind _Bas-Bleu_ with Draco, the day he'd told Astoria that he wouldn't marry her. _You're going to St. Mungo's right now, Ginny, and Hermione will take you,_ Harry had said, and then Hermione had taken her. They'd tricked her into having the Imperius test done, thinking that Draco had put it on her, and it never would have happened if Hermione hadn't gone along with it. Ginny opened her mouth to say yes.

"No", she said instead.

She felt a tremor of unease as he continued to stare at her, and even before he spoke, she had an awful feeling that she already knew exactly what he was going to say.

"Ginny. Where's Draco Malfoy?"

"I don't have any idea," she said. "That's why I'm trying to find him now. And he'd better not have really run out on me in the middle of the project! Do you know where he is, Harry?"

The brilliant green eyes narrowed. "No. I don't. I was rather thinking that _you_ might know, Ginny."

She shook her head.

Harry studied her intently for a few more moments. "Then we can search together," he said. "Gin, I've got all the proof I need to start the investigation again. Malfoy hasn't reformed a bit. He doesn't know shite about art—sorry, but you know that it's true. Those sketches he's been doing are rubbish. If we find him, then I'm telling you, I've got him. We can stop this stupid charade of a collaboration about the fountain statues; you can get away from him and start fresh with someone else. That's what you want—isn't it?" He looked at her challengingly.

Ginny nodded. She knew that she couldn't have possibly pulled off a lie, and that even a nod wouldn't have fooled anyone but Harry. But she saw that he did seem to be fooled. The floor of the lift quivered under her feet.

"All right, then," said Harry. She saw his shoulders relax. His mouth curved up in a smile, and for just an instant, it was so much like the smile of the innocent, eager boy he had once been that the sight made her heart hurt. And he slid his wand back into its holster.

Ginny whipped her own wand out. "_Vadere!_" she shouted. The force of her spell shoved Harry backwards, and the doors slammed shut.

At the same moment, the lift gave a sudden, violent jerk and began zooming upwards.

"Loftia," panted Ginny. "What happened? This wasn't part of the spell; we weren't supposed to go anywhere!"

"I can't help it," said the lift in a high, tinny voice. "The Department of Mysteries has- a great deal of power now—and Harry Potter's got far more than anyone else. I don't have any choice. Oh, hold on tight!"

The buttons began lighting up, one by one, and the bottom dropped out with frightening speed. Ginny's stomach plunged away from under her, and she hugged the floor. "Oh no, oh no! Loftia, did Harry send us somewhere? Someplace where he'll be waiting?"

"I don't have any choice," the lift repeated, and Ginny knew that she had our answer.

Ginny's eyes went up to the line of lit buttons. _Six. Seven. _ They were slowing, as if the lift were struggling against an implacable force but still losing out. _Eight._ Suddenly, horribly, she understood.

"The ninth floor," she whispered. "The Department of Mysteries. Loftia! Stop, please, stop!"

"I can't," the lift said in a metallic monotone. "It's not allowed."

"But you said you were loyal to Draco Malfoy!"

"I can't go against Harry Potter's orders," repeated the lift. "I have no choice."

"But—" Ginny struggled to think. "Doesn't your loyalty to Draco override anything that Harry would order you to do?"

"I am an Inanim," said Loftia. "I must follow our code, even when—" The monotone trembled. "Even when it breaks the heart that no Inanim should have."

"So you could go against the code!"

The silence was answer enough. Ginny glanced at the button to the ninth floor. It was beginning to light up, top to bottom, as if a tiny flame had been lit under it. _The lift's struggling against it_, she realized. _She wants to. She has the power to. But she's got to have a reason. A real one, a compelling one…_ And then she knew what it was.

"Loftia," she said, "I share a bond with Draco Malfoy. Isn't that more powerful than anything Harry could order any Inanim to do?"

"A—a bond?" Loftia's voice broke. "What sort of bond?"

Ginny blushed. "Well, you know. A, er, old-magic sort of bond."

"Let me feel," said the lift. "Quick. Place your hand here—so—"

A piece of the metal plate surrounding the buttons for the different floors rearranged itself into a hand-shaped depression, and Ginny fitted her palm and fingers into it. The brass glowed brightly, and the lift sighed.

"Oh! I can't believe… I didn't really dare to hope… but I can feel that you're telling the truth, Ginny. Here, and here, and here, and—"

The brass dimmed.

"Oh, dear," the lift whispered.

"What?" Ginny asked tensely.

"It won't work." The lift's voice was edged with hysteria. "It won't. I can't make it work. I hoped, I thought I could do it, I was so sure that we'd found a way—"

"Loftia!" Ginny rapped the brass plate smartly with her fingers. "What are you talking about; why won't it work? Look, I can't explain the entire thing right now, but the bond's strong enough—"

"But it isn't. It isn't. The bond was never consummated."

"You don't understand. We came so close," she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. "I—I _almost_ completely consummated the bond with Draco Malfoy; we even might have done it, but then…" _But then we didn't. I could have done it on the night he took me to the Crystal Palace; I could have even done it on Halloween, the night we were at Bas-Bleu, but we didn't._ Ginny fell silent.

There was a small, soft sound that might have been Loftia's weeping, or even her own; Ginny wasn't sure anymore. _There has to be a way. There has to be. Think, Ginny, think…_

"A future promise," Ginny said suddenly. "Loftia, what if I swore a promise-spell? That ought to be enough. Draco and I came so close; that would surely have to be enough."

"Maybe," said the lift, sounding doubtful. "But it would need to be a very serious sort of promise, and Ginny, I simply don't know—"

"Just tell me what the promise would be," she said.

"There's only one promise that would carry enough power," said Loftia. "You know that already, don't you?"

"What is it?" asked Ginny, knowing already exactly what it had to be.

"You'll need to promise that the bond will one day be consummated," said Loftia.

The next words came out of Ginny's mouth without her volition or control. She was sure of it. She would repeat that to herself over and over in the very darkest parts of the night, night after night, in the weeks to come. In her heart of hearts, she never believed it.

"Yes, " she said. Then she thought just a bit more. "If the opportunity ever comes to do it. And it's safe, truly safe. And if it won't hurt him or me. Then I will. " She spoke the closing words of the ancient vow with great care, knowing that they would bind her to her promise, life to life and beyond. "I do so promise. And so do I swear. I swear it. I swear." She felt the power of that promise eddy out from her words, like ripples from a stone thrown into a dark pool of the deepest water in the world.

The lift pulled up to the last floor and came to rest with a small click, and the final button lit up. It was the ninth floor.

Ginny felt her feet threaten to go out from under her. Ninth floor. Oh gods. The Department of Mysteries. No, oh no… I won't fall apart. I won't. Will. Not. "Loftia. What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm very much afraid that this is where Harry Potter wanted you sent," said the lift.

"But I thought that this wasn't supposed to happen. That was the entire point of the vow. What's gone wrong?"

"Nothing at all, my dear," said the lift. "I can't circumvent his orders entirely, you see, but I can change them. Harry Potter has a very limited mind—yes?"

"If anyone ever did, he does," said Ginny. "But what does that have to do with anything?"

The lift smiled, and once again, Ginny wondered how on earth that was possible. "He's expecting you to come out of the front door. What he doesn't know is that you'll be exiting through the back."

"Loftia?" she asked. "Can you just tell me this- is this actually the Department of Mysteries?"

"It is," said the lift. "But—oh dear, how to explain- it's not the same one where Harry Potter expects to find you. He has no idea what this place really is; he's far too limited to even begin to understand its nature. It's one of the soft places, you see, and he doesn't know the first thing about any of those."

The soft places. Oh! Ginny decided to take a chance. "Like the Crystal Palace?" she asked.

The lift blushed. "Er, well—yes. Exactly like the Crystal Palace. Or the Bas-Bleu Gallery. Or a number of other places I could name…"

"I think I'm beginning to understand," Ginny said softly.

"Just a moment, dear. I wouldn't rush off, if I were you."

Ginny paused. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you've just sworn a very serious vow. Don't you think that you ought to give it a moment's thought?"

"Oh. You mean… er… the vow to, um…" Ginny traced a pattern on the floor with the tip of her shoe.

"To fully consummate your bond with Draco Malfoy," said Loftia.

"Look, I said it because Harry was going to end up tracking down Dr—Malfoy if I didn't do something drastic," said Ginny. "I mean, that's true, isn't it?"

"Yes," agreed Loftia. "So you didn't mean what you said? You'd like to take it back?"

"No, I won't take it back! But I don't see how it could ever actually happen. I did say that I wasn't going to do it unless it was safe, and it wouldn't bring harm to either him or me. And…" Ginny sighed. "I don't see how that could happen."

"Why not?"

"Because things have changed. Choices have been made." Ginny blinked back sudden tears. "He's made promises, and so have I, in our own different ways. It's all taken us very far apart."

"And yet here you are, rushing off to save him from Harry Potter and putting yourself in all sorts of appalling danger," mused the lift. "You don't seem so very far apart, from my point of view."

"We are," blurted Ginny. "Malfoy and I—we are, we have to be. We can't be close, ever again. I mean it. You don't know; you don't understand. Our lives have to be separate, and they will be. I won't allow Harry to ruin him over this, that's all. But once the fountain sculptures are over and done with, Malfoy will go his way, and I'll go mine, and that'll be the end of it."

Loftia was silent for a moment. "I won't try to convince you that you're wrong," she finally said.

"Good. Because I'm not wrong. And now I really have to leave. So, if you don't mind—" Ginny started towards the doors again.

"But I'd like to tell you something," said Loftia. "It'll only take a minute or so."

"All right," Ginny said reluctantly.

"When Harry Potter first opened my doors," said Loftia, "there was murder in his face. It wasn't for you, of course. But I realized then that if it had been, I would have done anything to save you. I would have even broken the Inanim code, which would mean, oh dear, that my own existence ending would have been the least of the consequences; you can't imagine."

"Why?" asked Ginny, startled. "I mean, why would you have done it?"

"Because your death would destroy everything that is most precious in Draco," said the lift. "It's strange. We were all in mourning for so many years during his childhood. All of us loyal Inanims, the love-bonded ones, thought that his heart had been destroyed already, you see. Teddy was especially convinced of it. But when Draco first saw you, Ginny Weasley, we learned that we were wrong. His second-year Potions textbook couldn't _wait_ to spread the wonderful news. We all took a vow to keep you safe for him, as much as we could do." Loftia sighed. "I won't say that some of us haven't been tempted to eliminate certain… obstacles… in our way. Harry Potter's been spared from vengeance only by our strict code. There's an Inanim butcher knife in the Hogwarts kitchens that I've had to speak to very strictly, once or twice. And then I almost broke it myself, for your sake. " Loftia shook her head.

There was a huge lump in Ginny's throat. It made no sense for it to be there, but she still had to swallow and swallow to try to keep it down. "I don't understand," she said.

"Oh, I think you do, my dear. You and Draco are not destined to live your lives apart."

Ginny leaned her head against the brass plate, feeling the cool metal on her burning skin. "Is he here? On this floor, I mean? Can you tell me that?"

"He is," said Loftia.

She almost crumpled with relief; she could feel the waves of it washing over her skin, one right after the other. _Here. He's here. Draco's here._ "So I can find him?"

"That's a question that only you can answer," said Loftia. "But if you were to ask me, Ginny, I would tell you that I think it would all depend on how you look for him." The lift enfolded her in a hug, which seemed impossible, but somehow happened anyway. "Goodbye, my dear, and all the gods go with you."

Ginny closed her eyes, briefly. Then she opened them again. "_Lumos,_" she said, tapping her wand. Then she followed the tiny glow out the yawning doors, into the darkness, her heart beating like a huge drum.

A/N: Check out my new blog at www dot deathtrainthenovel dot com!


	67. A Battle Joined

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

The doors closed behind her with a soft clicking sound. "Wait," said Ginny, feeling more than a little alarmed. "Loftia, hold on a sec. I was going to ask you which way to go now, because I don't have any idea at all, and I don't even see a—"

The lift gave a muted ringing sound, and then Ginny heard it begin to quickly fall. Before she even had time to put together a proper protest, Loftia was long gone. She sighed. _Now what?_

Her eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness, and when she lifted her wand up, she saw that she was in a long, dark corridor with smooth walls. _Fuck. Another corridor. Just what I need!_If she really was in the Department of Mysteries, she remembered it all too well from that horrible day at the end of her fourth year; it ought to end at a single black door which opened into a circular room lined with even more doors. _And how the hell can Harry and the Aurors not be here? But Loftia said they're not, and she's loyal to Malfoy. So I have to trust her._

Slowly, she sheathed her wand, still remembering some of Loftia's words. _Running off doesn't seem like a very good start to me._ She walked down the corridor slowly, too, although the bottoms of her feet itched and burned to break into a run. Her thoughts darted through her head in quick fragments.

Draco, here. Close? Of course. He had to be. But she couldn't feel it. That made her afraid. Why not, why couldn't she? Shouldn't she be able to feel it, somehow, if he was anywhere near her? _I should be able to tell, if he's here. I should feel him. Through the bond. Especially because of what I just—oh, fuck._ A wave of scalding heat ran over her entire body as she remembered what she'd just done. No, not what she'd done. What she'd promised to do. With Draco.

The forbidden memories splintered through the back of her mind. Three weeks ago. The room in the Crystal Palace, everything dark and rich and sumptuous, a feast for the senses, and Draco Malfoy opening his arms to her in a huge, soft bed. And she had gone into them willingly. _Succumb to the power here instead of struggling against it, he'd said. What'll happen if I do? she'd asked. Wouldn't you like to find out? he'd answered._ And she had found out; oh yes, she had, as she had given herself over to the spell that Draco Malfoy had woven round her all through a long, endless night that she had finally brought to its end. And now, she herself had opened the Pandora's box she thought she had sealed so tightly against that night, letting loose whatever demons might lie under its lid.

But…

Astoria's eyes. Cold, narrow, pale blue, like slits of malicious sapphire. Watching, weighing, stealthily planning. And Astoria knew, now, what Draco Malfoy had been to her.

Ginny clenched her teeth together so hard that a sharp pain shot through her jaw. She walked faster. _I will never have to keep that vow_, she told herself doggedly. _That's all there is to it. Logic. Just think about it logically. It feels impossible to think about anything now, but I can do it, I can. I said I'd only do it… with Draco Malfoy_… Resolutely, she ignored her mind's attempts to fill in the parantheses. _If it were safe. If it wouldn't hurt either him or me. And it'll never be safe. Never. So I'll never do it._ The wand wavered in her hand. Something silver glinted off its surface and shot back at her.

_That's Draco's hair,_ Ginny thought in a perfectly illogical way for one wild second and then, No_. I don't know what the hell it really is_. All her muscles had bunched themselves into a knot, ready for a wild jump, but she ground her jaw even harder, cast a Muffling charm on herself, and crept along as unobtrusively as she could.

She held her wand up just a bit, angling it just so, and after a few moments, she saw the flash of silver again. It could only be coming from round a corner. _There weren't any turns in the corridor last time I was here. But then, nothing really looked like any of this. Shite! What does this mean?_

Ginny inched a little further forward, and then further still, holding up her wand. There was nothing to see now. Her foot caught on something, and she stumbled, twisting her ankle. _Shite! Exactly what I did the last time I was here. That's all I need!_ She leaned down and rubbed it, gritting her teeth against the throbbing ache. Then, grimly, she starting hopping down the corridor.

Ginny kept limping along. She couldn't help noticing that she didn't seem to be getting any closer to the end of the corridor, much less a huge black door. The hall split off again, but she barely noticed it as she kept walking. She didn't see anything she remembered from the last time she was here, so there hardly seemed much point in even paying attention to her surroundings. There was no mirror-like floor. No shimmering pool of blue lights. No circular room lined with twelve doors. This should have felt more reassuring than it did, she thought. This clearly wasn't the same Department of Mysteries she remembered. Not the one where Harry was probably storming around right this second. So why did she feel even more unsettled now? _This corridor's going on and on. Wonder if it'll ever end. Hold on a sec. The floor suddenly seems different, and didn't the lights look brighter just a minute ago—oh, no-_ Ginny stopped.

Everything had changed, although she had no idea exactly where or when it had happened. The walls were now papered in red flocked velvet with ebony wainscoting below. Orange witchlights burned in sconces. They cast pools of light on the floor, which had turned to polished dark wood. And the corridor was lined with wooden doors. Each had an old-fashioned keyhole beneath a china knob.

Ginny stared and stared. Again. It had happened again. She was back here again. An old, agonizing sensation welled up in her, horrid and painful and exquisitely sweet, nostalgia and fury and iron-hard determination not to fall into the trap yet again, the honey-sweetness concealing the poison, the seductive, irresistible madness, the scent of chocolate that was surely going to start wafting to her nose any second now… _He planned it. Malfoy plotted out this entire thing, beginning to end, Inanims at all. I was right to begin with. I should have got rid of all those bloody annoying mouthy Inanims in my flat in the first place! And I fell into it like a bloody idiot. Ooh! When I get hold of him.._.

She stalked round another corner, eyes blazing, fists clenched, fully expecting to find Draco Malfoy waiting for her. He'd be leaning up against a door, a smirk on his face, hands thrust casually into his pockets in that indescribably irritating way. _Why, Weasley. What took you so long? That's what he'll say. And then he'll hold out a chocolate truffle to me and wave it under my nose. I can see it all. Want a bite? That's what he'll ask, in that sexy, sultry voice of his. Oh, come on. Just one… little… bite? Well, I won't take it! I don't care what he does. It won't make the slightest bit of difference if he sort of leans forward and pushes the truffle so close that I can feel the texture of his skin on my lips, and then he coaxes my lips open with his fingertips, and I can taste the dark chocolate and I start sucking on his fingers and-_

Ginny had just about got to the point where she was still determinedly refusing to look at Draco as he pushed her up against the red-papered wall, slowly sliding chocolate into her open mouth until his finger completely disappeared, when she nearly ran right into a large metal door. She pulled herself up short, wincing. _I really, really do need to pay more attention to where I'm going_, she thought, listening very hard in an attempt to make up for it. There was a very faint sound coming from somewhere just under her nose, something that sounded almost like tiny footsteps. She looked down, saw what was making the sound, and gulped.

The lock on the door had a long, haughty face, and he was twiddling a pair of tiny thumbs. Each time they went round, they struck against the brass surface. _Thump. Thump. Thump._ That was what she'd heard.

"Fuck! Obfirmo?" she asked incredulously.

"Accurate memory is always pleasant," the lock said waspishly. "Vulgar language, however, is not. Personally, I never thought to hear such things from a Weasley, although I must say that I have been privy to rumours spread by Egyptian mummies regarding a certain sibling of yours named William, who is apparently in the habit of uttering oaths when stepping on scorpions in tombs-"

"I'm sorry," said Ginny hurriedly. "Really, I am. But what in Circe's name is going on now? What are you doing here?"

"I am the Malfoy lock which guards the going out, and the coming in? I see the past and the present, and I know more than I speak? Has your memory been sufficiently jogged as to my purpose?"

Ginny rubbed her aching head. "So you mean that Dr—Malfoy's here. Behind this door. You're guarding him?"

The lock looked at her a little sadly, she thought. "Let me hasten to say that I have done all that I could do, Ginny Weasley. I serve him faithfully, as I have served all of the Malfoys from time out of mind."

"A loyal Inanim," Ginny said softly.

Obfirmo nodded. "You have been speaking with Loftia, I see. But there are services which I cannot render. There are loyalties which are, and must be, divided."

"What do you mean?"

"You will understand that all too precisely and all too shortly, I fear." Obfirmo looked uncomfortable, which at least made more sense for a lock with a face, Ginny thought. "Time is very short, Ginny Weasley, and there is none to waste. Draco Malfoy is in more danger than you can comprehend—and I warn you that this danger comes from more quarters than you expect, based on your current state of knowledge."

Ginny felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. "You mean—not just from something Harry might do? I suppose you can't answer that. Couldn't you just shake your head yes or no?" The lock lapsed into perfect stillness. "Obfirmo, you've absolutely got to tell me what you mean by that," Ginny said desperately.

"In the many millennia of my service to the Malfoys," the lock said softly, "I cannot say whether I have ever been so sorely tempted to break the Inanim code, but even now, I will not do so. All I will say… and this alone is more than I should say, oh, much more indeed…" Obfirmo sighed. "You are a Gryffindor through and through, Ginny Weasley. I should remember that now, if I were you."

"What do you mean?" Ginny demanded. "I haven't been remembering it? How? "

Obfirmo only shook his brass head. "Pray that your loyalties are never divided as severely as mine most unfortunately are at the present moment, Ginny Weasley. Now depart, and quickly."

"But—"

The lock clicked open with such finality that the questions died on her lips, and the door swung wide.

The corridor stretched ahead, looking exactly the same as it had on the other side of the metal door. One more dark wooden door was directly to her right, only a few feet away, and a dull shock splintered through her as she realized that she had seen it only a few weeks before. It had been on the night of the twenty-sixth of October, and she had stood in the doorway as Draco pleaded with her to come back to him, and told her that she'd made him beg. That she'd got him to do what no Malfoy had ever done. But she had looked at his cold, impossibly beautiful face, and she had known that she could not stay with him, and that she could not give herself to him fully, as he had begged her to do. It was because she had begged him to give up his wife, Astoria Malfoy, and he wouldn't do it.

_That would be the same Astoria Malfoy who's kneeling on the floor of the corridor right now, trying to break into the room,_ thought Ginny.

Astoria tried to turn the doorknob first one way, then the other. She rattled it back and forth and pulled on it, all to no avail. She yanked a silver pin from her hair and stuck it into the keyhole, jiggling it up and down; the door still remained stubbornly closed. Then she got up on her heels and squatted, putting her eye to the keyhole and cupping her hands over it, moving her head back and forth. "Draco?" she called into it. "Time to wake up, sweetheart."

_Draco. She… said… 'Draco.' And then she said, 'sweetheart.'_ That, decided Ginny, was the last straw. Everything clicked into place in a single instant, then. As she watched Astoria on the floor, she suddenly understood exactly what Obfirmo had meant when she'd said that she'd stopped acting like a Gryffindor, even though she wasn't entirely sure if she'd understood much of anything else he'd said to her. She remembered hiding underneath the desk in Draco's office as Astoria kissed him, and watching her drag him out with her. She remembered what she had wanted to do to Astoria when she saw that, and she remembered how she had decided to behave instead.

Ginny decided then that she might—just might—want to make a very small modification in her behavior when it came to her dealings with Astoria. _Quite a minor one, really,_ she thought calmly. Just before she sprang forward, she took a small precaution that she decided just might be somewhat necessary. Or at least, it was entirely possible that she would have reason to be glad that she'd done it, at some later time. Later on, in fact, Ginny would wonder if she could actually hear the bridges burning at that particular moment.

In one fluid movement, she swooped down next to Astoria, jostling her aside. As she'd expected, Astoria gave a cry of shock and fell over backwards onto the floor.

Her eyes narrowed, and she scrambled up quickly, her back to the wall, followed by Ginny every inch of the way. "How the hell did you get in here, Weasley?"

"Never mind that now," said Ginny. "Is Draco Malfoy in there?"

Astoria gave a little snort. "What on earth would ever lead you to believe that I'd tell you anything at all about my husband?"

Ginny gritted her teeth. "We don't have a minute to waste, Astoria," she repeated.

Astoria gave her a pleasant smile. She twitched her robe aside to reveal her own wand, drawn and ready. "I don't know about you, Weasley, but I've got plenty of time, and explanations are in order. Don't you think?"

In her head, Ginny swiftly replayed a certain piece of what she had privately renamed the "desk conversation". _You can call Ginny Weasley by whatever name you like, darling, but don't fool yourself into thinking that I don't know what you're really doing with her. Because you only want her for one thing, and I'm sure she's good at that, said Astoria. She really did look exactly like an Afghan hound hit by about a dozen Anorexia charms at once at that moment_. Ginny allowed a wide, insulting smile to spread over face. "Oh, I don't think so at all," she said. "Not from me, anyway. Astoria, I've had you covered this entire time. Did you really think I wouldn't have done?" She inclined her head downward and shrugged aside her concealing jumper, revealing the small, somewhat necessary precaution she had taken earlier, for which she was now devoutly glad.

Astoria's smile faded into a scowl at the sight of Ginny's wand. Her gaze dropped. Steadily, slowly, brown eyes met blue. _Oh, I wish I'd done this long ago,_ thought Ginny. _Obfirmo was right._

"So now we know that we don't have to fake a nice conversation," said Ginny. "Thank all the gods for that. Let's put our Snap cards on the table, shall we, Astoria?"

"I don't mind if we do. But I've still got a wand on you, just as you've got one on me," snapped Astoria. "So you'd better just tell me the truth, Ginny Weasley."

"Right, right. I think this is what Muggles call mutually assured destruction," said Ginny, with a lot more bravado than she felt. Astoria's wand hand was shaking badly, and she was bound to know loads of nasty Dark spells… _what if she just lets off a few by sheer accident?_ "I don't mind telling you that Obfirmo let me in," she said.

Astoria looked down her nose. "Why on earth would he have done such a thing?"

"Because he knows that I'm Malfoy's business partner," said Ginny, narrowing her own eyes. "Why'd he do it for you?"

"Do you really need to ask?" Astoria sniffed.

_Not that he wanted to do it. Not that he would have done, if he'd been given any choice at all. This was what he had meant when he said his loyalties were divided,_ Ginny thought with a sinking feeling. _It all makes sense now. No—not all of it. More dangers than I can comprehend, from more quarters than I expect—oh gods, what did he mean?_

Ginny looked down at the other woman's skinny hand with its long red fingernails, and thought of it touching Draco. Terrible things rushed through her head. _Oh fuck, how I wish I'd never tried to appease her, to ignore her, to hide. I thought it was the best thing, but it wasn't. It might've even been the worst. It didn't protect Draco, that's for sure. _

"Shut up, Astoria," she said, instead of all the horrible things she had wanted to say. "Malfoy and I are working on the sculpture project together, and you're not dragging him away from our work this time. That's why I'm here."

"Don't be ridiculous," snapped Astoria. "I know exactly why you're here, and working on an artistic project certainly isn't it. Are you honestly deceiving yourself into thinking that I don't know what you really want with my husband?"

"Draco Malfoy and I have a business relationship," Ginny said through gritted teeth. "Just because you're not capable of understanding—"

In the middle of her sentence, the floor suddenly dropped under her feet and yanked itself sideways. Ginny stumbled and tried to hang onto the wall. It lasted no more than a moment. _Ooh… I think I'm going to throw up…_ She shook her head, trying to clear it. The corridor looked exactly the same. _Maybe I'm just becoming ill. It doesn't seem as if anything actually happened. Astoria looks the same. Well, except that she's pointing her wand right at my face now… oh, dear._

"

Get out, Ginny Weasley," Astoria said flatly. "Now. Draco's my husband. I have the right to be here, and you don't. I don't know how you fooled Obfirmo, but it doesn't matter now. I want you out."

Ginny swore silently. She had lost her tight grip on her wand when she'd stumbled, and her hand was now a couple of inches away from it. _Still so close, though. Maybe I can distract her, or something. Keep her talking_… "Why should I, Astoria?"

"Because I've got a wand trained on you, and I tell you so."

_I have to admit, she's got a point_, thought Ginny. "But what good is it going to do you?" she parried. "You didn't seem to be having much luck getting into that room when I got here. How's it going to help you to get rid of me?"

Astoria was silent. Ginny pressed her advantage.

"You can't get in there at all, can you? Whether I'm here or not?"

Still, nothing.

A thought came to her. "He's hiding from you," said Ginny. "That's it, isn't it?

Everything you told Rita Skeeter is a lie from beginning to end. Dr—Malfoy came here to escape from you, and— and you aren't going to be able to get in this room, no more than you did in May." Ginny prayed that Astoria didn't know just how successfully she herself had entered it with Draco only two weeks ago. _But surely she doesn't. She can't possibly…_

Astoria flushed a horribly unattractive shade of red. "That you would even dare to bring that up, Weasley…" The wand in her hand wavered.

Ginny's blood was thumping so hard in her veins that she could hardly breathe, the silver keyhole winked behind Astoria every time she moved back and forth, and she felt as if she would dare anything, when every thought and action had narrowed down to the next moment, and the next, and the next, when Draco breathed behind that door that Astoria could not enter.

Astoria straightened up. "I haven't even begun to properly try yet," she said. "I'll take as much time as I need. I'll get in. Believe me, Weasley. I'll get in to find my husband." She laid stress on the last two words, and then looked at Ginny with cold blue eyes. "The Rita Skeeter article was rather accurate, I think. I fully intend to spend the next two and a half weeks planning out certain details of the Pureblood Ball on several of the committees, Draco by my side every step of the way."

A moment of queasy panic seized Ginny, and everything seemed to waver again. What if Astoria really did get in? What if she could do everything she threatened? _She's a Malfoy wife. Obfirmo had to let her through. Doesn't that mean… oh, shite…_ "Even if you could do everything you claim," said Ginny, struggling to keep her voice level, "if you do take Draco away from the Ministry, then we wouldn't be able to finish those sketches for the fountain sculptures."

"No, he'd be much too busy for that sort of rubbish, wouldn't he?" said Astoria. "My husband would be engaged in activities far more important than anything you could understand, Weasley."

Ginny looked at the coldly pretty woman standing across from her, still holding the wand in her face. " Astoria, can't you think about someone else besides yourself for one bloody second? If Malfoy doesn't complete these sketches with me, and if we don't come up with some sort of decent version, then Harry will have the perfect excuse to re-open the investigations. They'll put him on trial before the Wizengamot again, and this time there won't be any amount of money in the world that can get him off. He'll bloody well end up in Azkaban again. Can you even understand that much?"

Astoria stopped. Her eyes glittered. "Azkaban?" she asked tensely. "What do you mean? How do you know?"

"I don't know anything," said Ginny, instinctively stepping back slightly.

"You do; you must. Nobody's sent to Azkaban anymore. Not now—and you said- So you must know something. Who told you?"

She was like Draco, Ginny thought numbly. In moments of strain, all affectations were stripped away from her speech and body and mannerisms, all civilization from her face, revealing the core of what she really was. Except that with Draco, even when what Ginny had seen had frightened her, at moments like this, it had never been this bad. _With Astoria… well…_ If Draco had ever seen her like this, avid, snakelike, Ginny couldn't believe that he ever would have asked her to marry him for any reason at all.

"Nobody told me anything!" said Ginny, fighting revulsion as well as fear. "It makes sense, that's all. If Harry has anything to say about it, they'd open up Azkaban all over again, just for him."

Astoria stepped back, and the mask descended again, although it fit badly now. She shoved herself forward so that her face was only inches away from Ginny's. "Why don't you simply drop the pretense, Weasley? You don't want to get in that room in order to do any sketches, or to work on any plans for sculptures . You want to steal my husband away from me! It's all you've ever wanted to do-"

Ginny stared at her. "Didn't you hear a word I just said? Your husband will end up in Azkaban, if Harry has his way, not that that seems to mean anything to you!"

Astoria's face twisted even further. "Do you really think I don't know what you're trying to do, Weasley?"

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Astoria!"

"Tell me!" Astoria pushed the wand forward, until it grazed Ginny's cheek. "You've got to tell me. You don't have any choice. You don't—"

The room swayed again, blurring briefly into glossy black. Ginny braced herself and kept her balance this time, but when she came back to herself, she immediately saw that Astoria hadn't. Her wand hand had dropped. Ginny didn't stop to think; she simply acted, whipping out her wand and shoving it into Astoria's chest. _Damn. That felt good. My reflexes are still awfully quick. Maybe I ought to take up Quidditch on the weekends again. If I ever get out of here, that is._

"The tables have turned, haven't they?" she asked, looking at Astoria's white face. "So why don't you tell me what you think I'm trying to do."

Ugly flecks of red rose in Astoria's cheeks. "To break—"

"Yes?" Ginny prodded at Astoria's ribs. _Doesn't she ever eat?_

"The bond. The Pureblood Bond. "

Seconds ticked by.

"You haven't consummated it yet, with Draco," said Ginny, understanding at last. "The two of you haven't consummated the marriage."

"No, we haven't," Astoria said sullenly.

Ginny stood very still, doors opening in her mind. _They haven't. She hasn't… he hasn't… they've never…_ But they were doors that still must remain closed, so they would do, of course. She pictured herself frantically running up and down corridors, trying to push them shut. They kept springing open, for some odd reason.

"But there's one little fact that I suppose you're unaware of, Weasley," said Astoria. "If he consummates it with anyone other than his wife, then it'll destroy him. In ways you couldn't possibly understand, not being a part of our world."

"We're business partners," said Ginny. "I told you that you couldn't understand that. But still, I suppose that's the sort of thing you would do, if you had even half a chance."

Astoria laughed. "That I would do?"

"Well—yes. You're the one plotting out how you'd destroy him if he ever found happiness with anyone else," said Ginny.

"No. It's not what I would do. It's Pureblood law, and I couldn't stop it if I tried." Astoria looked at her condescendingly. "You really don't understand the first thing about it, do you?" she asked. "I suppose it's because the Weasleys didn't bother to teach their children any proper pureblood pride in the first place. Draco would lose everything. All the Malfoy money, the property, the estates—simply everything."

"You don't think that would be important to him, I suppose?" she went on when Ginny could think of nothing to say to that. "Even if you've fooled yourself into thinking he'd somehow be noble enough to happily live in the sort of poverty you're used to, you'd better just think about this. He spread a lot of bribes around to get the Junior Minister position. Without the Malfoy money, he could hardly keep those up, and he'd be booted out so fast it would make his handsome head spin. He's made a lot of enemies, and they'd love to see him fall."

"You're lying," said Ginny, mechanically.

"I'm not," said Astoria.

"It doesn't matter," muttered Ginny. "It doesn't. I'm going to go and look in the keyhole now. And you're going to sit right there, Astoria. You're not going to move. Do you understand me?"

The other woman grimaced horribly at her, but said nothing.

Ginny backed towards the door, keeping her eyes on Astoria as much as she could. She knelt down, her body twisted round uncomfortably, and cast a Warning spell behind her. Then she knelt down and looked through the keyhole.

She could see nothing at first, and a wave of awful disappointment swept over her. _He isn't here. Nobody's here_. In that instant, she was horribly sure of it, and the knowledge was like a tiny cruel thing clawing at her heart.

Then her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

It was the same room she'd known through a long long night only two weeks before. She realized it with a shock of recognition, like a long draft of chill sweet water down her parched throat. The rich carpets were the same, and the gleaming wood of the floor, and the sconces on the wall sending pools of warm light over the luxurious four-poster bed. The bed.

Draco Malfoy was lying in it on his side, one arm thrown over the side, one arm over his head, breathing deeply and evenly in the abandonment of sleep. There were dark circles under his closed eyes, as if this were the first full sleep he had had in a very long time. A fringe of silvery blond hair fell over his pale face, and the coverlet was pulled up around his thin shoulders. As Ginny stared, his eyes fluttered open, and he looked at her.

The sconce over the bed cast very long shadows over his face, making his eyes looked much darker than they were. She couldn't see his expression at all. He turned slightly, holding the coverlet with one hand, and she thought that he looked as if he was moving in his sleep, as if he hadn't woken up at all. She was fiercely glad. One of his hands reached out for her; she saw how very thin it was.

"Ginny," he said in a low, cracked, wandering voice.

Then Draco Malfoy's eyes closed, and he relaxed bonelessly back into the bed, his slight weight hardly seeming to make an indentation in the mattress.


	68. The Battle Won-- and an important note!

A/N: This is another one of those chapters that was revised—basically, some unnecessary material was taken out! Also, please see the note at the end of the chapter. I have an incredibly exciting new idea that would benefit all of us. And that includes YOU!

CHAPTER 68

For a few seconds, Ginny could not move, could not speak, could not think. Then she felt the prickling down her spine._ The Warning Spell!_ She whirled round. Astoria was creeping up behind her. Ginny's reflexes kicked in, and she moved first, faster, driving her wand forwards and up.

"_Petrificatus Totalus_!" she cried.

The room surged tremendously to the left. At first, all Ginny could think was that somehow her spell had caused it, had inexplicably driven the movement, as if magic itself had suddenly, violently turned and twisted into something beyond sense and reason. She clutched at the wall and then slipped sideways on the floor. But she would have got back on her feet, she was sure of it, except that the wooden floor turned slick and slippery and pulled itself out from under her. The sore left ankle twisted, and she fell onto it, wincing with pain. Too late, the corridor stilled again.

The first thing Ginny saw from her position on the floor was the triumphant smile on Astoria's face. _My spell didn't work; it must have missed her when I fell _ flashed through Ginny's mind, and then, _Whatever it was that just happened, it didn't surprise her a bit_, and finally, _My right hand is empty. Oh, fuck!_

Too late (_again!_ thought Ginny), she made a frantic lunge for her wand where it had fallen on the floor, but Astoria was faster this time. She kicked it forward so that it skidded against the wall, ricocheted, and slid under the door of the room, where it disappeared.

Astoria pointed her wand at Ginny's nose, quite deliberately. Ginny tensed, coiled to spring. _If I jumped up at her, if I just grabbed at it… she'd hex me _

Ginny started scrambling up, but she had barely gotten to one knee before the air shivered again. She gripped at the door handle as the world shifted round her, pulling her sideways.

She only realized much later that if she hadn't done, she would not have seen the truth of what was really happening until it was too late. From her new angle on the floor, she saw it all.

For the briefest second, the corridor itself changed. Ginny saw it very clearly now. The floor turned to a mirror-smooth black, as glossy as a pool of dark water. The straight hall was now a small, circular room, and even in this rapid glimpse, Ginny saw that it was evenly lined by doors. _Twelve of them_, she thought automatically. She glanced behind her. In that last instant, she saw the large black door that led back to the main passageway of the Department of Mysteries.

Then the air wavered again, and she was back in the long, dim corridor with its red-papered walls and wooden floors.

Astoria looked down at her with glittering eyes, still holding the wand only an inch or so from her nose.

"Aren't you going to ask me what's going on, Weasley?" Her voice was mocking.

"No. Because I already know. There's only one explanation. The corridor…" whispered Ginny. "It's shifting; it's changing into the Department of Mysteries. That's it, isn't it? But how?"

"I suppose it doesn't really matter now if you know," said Astoria. Her voice trembled, and Ginny thought rapidly. Astoria was barely able to suppress her triumph; Ginny would have bet anything on that. _Should I keep her talking? Or is that actually the very worst thing I could do? Oh, shite, I wish I knew!_

"Really?" asked Ginny, deciding to take a chance. "What are you talking about, Astoria?"

"I told you the truth when you asked me if I was casting that tiresome spell to attempt to drag us all back to the Department of Mysteries. I wasn't, and I'm not. But someone else is."

"You mean… Harry?" Ginny looked up at her in total disbelief.

Astoria nodded.

Ginny sat up straight, barely even noticing the wand pointed directly in her face. "But he won't help _you_! He arrested you two bloody weeks ago because you were trying to get into St. Mungo's, if he gets hold of you, he'll never walk out of the Ministry again; he'll send you to Azkaban."

"Astoria gave her a contemptuous little smile. "This corridor will disappear when the wing turns back into the Department of Mysteries. _You'll_ be trapped here. But I won't. You see, the room will disappears as well, and then it won't matter whether or not I could find a way in. I'll go with my husband."

Everything had gone suddenly silent; Ginny could no longer even hear her own breathing, just a dim, faraway buzzing in her head. _The room_. Her hand had dropped down from the doorknob, but she was still only a foot or so away from it. So close, so very close. If she could somehow keep Astoria talking, play for time even though there wasn't any time, if she could distract her and fling the door open and run inside before Astoria hexed her into oblivion… but then, there was no way to be sure if she could actually even open the door at all…

""So you really think the bond is strong enough?" she asked, as calmly as she could.

"It is. Because I'm his wife, whether you like it or not."

"But it hasn't been consummated yet. You told me that yourself, Astoria." Ginny edged just a few inches closer, along the wall.

"That doesn't matter, Weasley. It will be, as soon as I get him away." Astoria's voice was very hard.

"You don't seem to have had much success so far," said Ginny. She eased just a bit further. _If I stretch my arm… if I reach my hand out… almost there_… "But it really was very clever of you to figure out that Harry was trying to pull this corridor back to the Department of Mysteries." _Almost…_ "I wonder how you're taking advantage of it?" She could feel the cold china brushing her fingertips. "I don't think you're half as thick as everyone's always thought, really—"

_Now!_

Ginny lunged for the doorknob. Astoria screamed and jumped down on her, fighting to tear her hand away. Ginny gritted her teeth and hung on with all her strength, wincing when she felt Astoria's long nails scratching at her arms. She pulled one hand loose, instinctively, grabbing at thin air, and felt her fingers close around Astoria's wand with a shock. She yanked it back as hard as she could, and for the first time, the other woman's eyes widened in real alarm.

"Don' t—don't ," panted Astoria. "Let go, Weasley!"

_Why isn't she hexing me? I ought to try—no, not with her wand, not when it feels so—this is all wrong, I've never felt anything like this-_ Ginny forced herself to hold on tighter, and then gasped at the deep, cold shiver of magic she felt splintering up her arm. "Shite! What is this? Tell me or—" She gulped. "Or I'll snap it in half right now!"

"It wouldn't do you any good if you did!"

"Oh, wouldn't it?" Ginny narrowed her eyes. "Well, this'll do some good!" She swallowed hard, and then she grabbed Astoria's wrist and started twisting. Astoria whimpered, and Ginny felt a wave of sickness go through her. She dropped the thin arm. _I can't do that. Not even to her._ She pulled harder at the wand, but Astoria clung onto it harder than she'd imagined possible.

"You can't stop me now," she said.

"What do you mean?" Ginny felt a sudden chill.

Her thin face lit with a sudden flame of triumph. "I've had a Dark Opening spell on this wand all along, Weasley.."

"Oh, gods," Ginny whispered. "That's why my hex didn't work. It's why you haven't even tried to hex me. And that's why Harry was able to find this corridor in the first place. Isn't it? You've opened everything to him!"

Astoria laughed shrilly. "Yes, yes, and you can't break a Dark spell- not even by destroying the wand! I'm the only one who has the power to do it, and I will. At just the right moment, you see, when Harry Potter's changed the entire wing except for this corridor, and I'll know exactly when that moment is!" She yanked suddenly and viciously on the wand, and Ginny pulled back. _Oh gods. Oh gods, what now…_

The door was behind Ginny again now; the keyhole was at her back, and she felt its presence like an actual physical force. "You'll destroy Draco," she said desperately. "That's what you'll do. Do you hate him that much? Is that it?"

"Do you really think that I'd discuss my feelings for him with you?" asked Astoria. "I'm not leaving him for Harry, and that's all that matters."

Ginny made a sudden move backwards so that she was flat to the wall; she still held the wand tenaciously by one end, and Astoria was forced to stumble forward. She edged her other hand closer and closer back to the doorknob.

The room tilted again, crazily, and Ginny felt herself sinking through space. The cold china of the doorknob was under her fingers. She clung to it desperately, cupping her hand round it, and she felt it begin to turn. The world went right-side-up again, and she was shaken loose about a foot away from the door. _But I felt it turn! I did.. I did…_

She realized that the floor was still a shiny black, and her heart swooped into her throat. _It's too late._ The door at the end of the long, dark hall was opening, slowly, inexorably.

Then the corridor faded back into view around her. Astoria was still gripping onto the other end of the wand, and her face looked more triumphant than ever. _But she was facing the opposite way. She didn't see what I did… _

"Just a few more minutes, I think," said Astoria.

"Until it's too late," said Ginny.

"Too late for you, yes, if that's what you mean."

"No. That's not what I mean." Ginny faced Astoria squarely. "I saw the other end of the corridor. The door was opening."

Astoria's eyes widened.

"If this was working the way you thought it would, then you'd already be gone," said Ginny. "You're not. Neither is Draco. You can't get into that room, but I can. If you care at all about what happens to him, then just let me go into get him out of here. That's all I want to do, Astoria! I swear that I'll just get him out before Harry comes in here and finds us all and it really is too late—"

Color raced up Astoria's face as if a bucket of red paint had been poured over her head. "No!" she snarled. "You wouldn't go in there to get Draco out, and you know it perfectly well! Don't lie to me about saving him—you want to go into that room to shag my husband."

Ginny could feel her grip tightening on the wand until she was sure it really would break. _Yes, You're Right, I Did Swear to Shag Draco Malfoy, As A Matter of Fact, If the Opportunity Ever Arose. Is it actually tattooed on my face?_ "That's not true, Astoria," said Ginny, fighting to keep her voice from breaking into a scream. "I swear it's not. I don't want those things from him. I'd never do it."

Astoria's mouth twisted. "You're lying. I know exactly what you want from my husband, and I won't let you in there, you slut!"

_I can't kill her. I can't, I can't,_ Ginny chanted to herself. "Astoria, you-" She forced herself to say the words. It felt like swallowing a mouthful of burning ashes. "You're right. He's your husband. He'll still be your husband after all of this over, all of us get out of here, and we finish these bloody sculpture plans! But if we don't do that, if we don't get away and we can't prove to Harry that we're doing it, then he really will destroy Malfoy."

END OF CHAPTER 68

Okay, here's the exciting note!

I'm working on two books right now—Death Train, and Harry Potter and Big Book of Boys' Naughty Bits (an utterly unauthorized parody. If y'all have questions about the legal status of parodies, PLEASE go to www dot deathtrainthenovel dot com and read that page.) And I realized something. I have never EVER seen a forum specifically for fanfic writers who are slaving away at producing publishable work. So I want to create a forum for us, the fanfic writers. Advice! Sharing! All the information I've painstakingly learned! My Fun Facts About Copyright Law Page! Lots and lots of stuff!

Basically, it would be a discussion board specifically for fanfic writers who are/want to be/want to find out about/would like to hear about:

producing publishable work  
the writing process  
how it relates to fanfic  
how to stay on the right side of the law during all of these activities  
how to self-publish  
how to promote  
etc, etc, etc!

However, it would also include people who just want to discuss their fanfic writing or their totally original work, as well as any other issues that might come up (The common denominator would be the _fanfic author._ I have been doing so much research, and I want to share and learn! We fanfic writers ARE on the laser's edge right now, and we need to support each other. We are the future of publishing. We have the opportunity to shape what commercial publishing will become in the next few years. And I don't know of any discussion board with forums specifically devoted to us.

HOWEVER…

I would be hosting this on my WP blog through Simple Press. This has by far the most functionality, flexibility, and number of options (also support and documentation). But this means that it's not free (I mean that it has a monthly cost aside from the hosting fees.) I'll pay for it, but I really want to get some idea of just how many people would be interested in this before making the plunge.

SO… what does everybody think?

(And again, if you have specific questions about copyright, PLEASE visit that page and read all the research.)


	69. The Mysterious Room

A/N: Thanks to all readers! And don't forget to leave comments on the forum idea…

Chapter 69

Astoria looked even worse with all the blood drained from her face, Ginny decided. The room took another violent swing to the right, the lights dimming, and she saw the huge door at the end of the corridor swing open even further. Was there someone _behind_ it? _Don't let that be the last time. Oh, gods, please, no!_ But the corridor came back into view, slowly and reluctantly.

"But I won't do _anything_ like that with him. That's what I've been trying to tell you all along. I swear I wouldn't," she said. "Look, I'll take some sort of vow—wouldn't that be good enough?"

"No!" snarled Astoria.

_Swing._ The room yawed again. In a brief, blurry flash, Ginny saw the door again. It was open about halfway now, and she saw the outline of a head. She had no doubt at all about that now.

_Harry._ Or… was it? She didn't know; she'd seen that glimpse of a head for less than a second. But when the corridor came back into focus and she saw Astoria's face, she knew that whoever it was she'd really seen, Astoria had seen, too.

Ginny groped behind her, keeping her eyes on the blonde woman. _Door, where's the door? I was so close… _"Fuck, Astoria, will you just listen to me? Harry's on the other side of that door; he's got to be, and when he comes through, it's going to be all over."

"I'll be gone by then," said Astoria. "With Draco."

"You'd be gone already if that was really going to work. As it is, you'll be stuck right here, facing Harry Potter in a rage. Remember the last time you ended up doing that? You should do; it was only a couple of weeks ago."

Astoria hesitated.

The door had simply vanished, Ginny thought half-hysterically. She kept scrabbling around behind her with her left hand as she still clung to the wand with her right, barely even trying to hide it from Astoria, not that she seemed to notice, but she couldn't find _anything_ except an expanse of blank wall. Nothing was solid anymore; it might all dissolve into mist any second for all she knew, and when that cleared, they would both be standing in the Department of Mysteries, once and for all.

"No, I won't," Astoria said suddenly. "No matter what. And you might as well give up on trying to get that wand away from me, Weasley. I've put a Clinging charm on it as well."

_Fuck! I ought to have guessed._ "Astoria, will you just listen to me?" Ginny felt the sweat breaking out on her forehead. It was icy cold. "For gods' sake, listen. I'll take any sort of vow that I won't do anything you think I'm going to do with Draco Malfoy. I mean it. I'll swear _anything_. Is that good enough for you?"

"Of course it isn't," said Astoria. "I wouldn't believe anything that you said- short of an Unbreakable Vow, maybe."

_Would I actually do that, if I could?_ The perfectly mad thought flashed through Ginny's mind. "I'm not going to do that," said Ginny. "I can't. We don't have a Bonder."

"But would you?" Astoria thrust her face close. "Just tell me that, Weasley."

Ginny stared at her, seeing the flecks of red in her dead-white cheeks. "Do you honestly expect me to make a vow that would mean I'd _die_ if I ever broke it?"

The blonde woman laughed. "So you were lying all along. I knew it!"

"I… I'm not lying," said Ginny.

_Loftia, what if I swore a promise-spell?_ She'd asked that question, less than half an hour before.

_You'll need to promise that the bond will one day be consummated._ That was what Loftia had said to her in reply.

And then she had said… then she had sworn…

_I do so promise. And so do I swear. I swear it. I swear._

"Astoria—" she began, not even knowing what else she possibly could say.

_Twist._ The air seized and solidified. Ginny felt the slippery dark floor under her feet, and the dank musty smell of the Department of Mysteries curled in her nose. The massive, black door creaked open halfway, and a figure stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the faint light beyond. A head of spiky hair moved, and a flash of light zigzagged across Harry's glasses.

_This is it,_ thought Ginny. _It won't change back. We've come too far,_ and then, in the same moment, _no, no, I won't let it happen, I won't let it be too late!_ She grabbed at her end of Astoria's wand as hard as she could, and with a savage burst of strength, she yanked it towards her. A searing bolt of pain ran up her arm, and the room went black.

A sickening ache pounded through Ginny's head, and she squinted against the dim orange light. _We're back in the corridor,_ she realized with a rush of relief. She tried to sit up and winced, and rubbed her temples with her hands. Then she stopped. _My hands are empty. Both of them. Astoria's got the wand!_ Ginny leaped to her feet, struggling against a wave of nausea.

But Astoria was only staring down at her own empty hands. "What the hell happened to it?" demanded Ginny.

"I—I don't know." Astoria didn't look up.

_Fuck! What's happened now?_ "Answer me! Where is it?"

In answer, Astoria pointed to the door. Ginny couldn't help feeling a brief flash of relief that it still existed after all, but it was instantly erased by the blonde woman's next words.

"It… rolled… under the door."

"So you can't break the spell," said Ginny.

"No," whispered Astoria. She looked up. "But I can still keep anyone else from doing it."

"You can shut your gob and fucking _listen_ to me, that's what you can do!" snarled Ginny. She grabbed Astoria's arms and shook her back and forth. "Harry is coming to get all three of us. I'm willing to swear on anything you like that I won't seduce Draco Malfoy. Now you're going to do whatever you have to do so that I can take that hex off your wand, or I'll—"

"_You_ couldn't do it, anyway—stop _shaking_ me, Weasley—"

"But someone could! Right?"

"Yes, someone could. My husband could. But not unless you get into that room. And I mean what I said."

_What if I swore? I do so promise. I swear. I swear. I swear._

"No," said Ginny, past the voices echoing in her head. "We- we don't have a Bonder; it wouldn't work even if I did it, there's _got_ to be something else."

Astoria straightened up. A strange, icy look crossed her tear-stained face. "Swear by a vow of old magic, then. Those are more powerful than Unbreakables, anyway. Swear, or I'll take my chances with Harry and stay right here, Ginny Weasley!"

A crazy kaleidoscope of voices struggled and shifted within her head. A thousand reasons not to make the vow. A thousand arguments against it. Then, the sight of Draco Malfoy's face, waking from sleep, drowsily smiling when he saw her, saying _Ginny, Ginny…_ His hands, reaching out to her.

The choice was impossible. Impossible. In a second that seemed to last forever, Ginny teetered on an agonized precipice, trapped between the choices she had already made. _There's no way out!_

_Or… or is there?_

_How can this be?_

But incredibly, it was. As Ginny stared into the dark distance at the end of the corridor, she watched a way open in her mind. It barely skirted a bone-shattering fall, stepping between two perilous paths and leading straight down the side of the mountaintop. _Could it be? I think… maybe. It really could. I never would've believed it, but I really think this just might work._

"Well?" asked Astoria, breaking in on her stunned thoughts.

Ginny chose her words with great care.

"Astoria Malfoy," she said, clearly and deliberately. "I tell you that I, Ginny Weasley, will not steal the consummation of your marriage from you with your husband Draco Malfoy, because it would cause him harm."

"That's not enough," said Astoria."You'll find some way to wriggle out of it, Weasley."

"Fine!" snapped Ginny. "I won't _fuck_ him before you! How's that? I do so promise. And so do I swear. I swear it. I swear." And she felt the power of that promise eddy out from her words, like ripples from a stone thrown into a dark pool of the deepest water in the world.

"That had better be good enough," she said flatly.

Astoria squinted at her for one more moment. "It's good enough," she finally said. She nodded her head in the direction of the door. "_Termino._"

"How do I know that spell's even worked?" demanded Ginny. "You obviously don't have a wand."

"It's wandless magic. You wouldn't know anything about it, of course, but Draco will be able to undo the spell as soon as you get in the room, and if you plan to do it, you'd better- " Astoria glanced at the other end of the corridor.

The air gave a little shimmering wave that seemed to pull Ginny's knees sideways. "Hurry!" she thought she heard Astoria hissing from one side, but she ignored it, because there was nothing else she needed to hear from her. The very air was pulled tight, like a cloth about to rip in half under the strain, and she knew without being told that there were only seconds left to act.

Ginny turned and stumbled towards the door, grabbing at the handle. The floor suddenly slid out from under her feet. She scrabbled desperately at the wall, feeling the cold china knob under her fingers. _Thank all the gods!_

But it wouldn't turn.

"You can't even get in," Astoria's spiteful, shrill voice was saying. "Can you, Weasley? How funny. After all of that, you'll be trapped, because I'll bet the spell will take me out of here after all when the corridor changes, and then—"

"Get the hell out, Astoria!" said Ginny without turning her head. "If this corridor does turn back, you're closer to the door, and Harry will grab you first!"

All she heard after that was the sound of running feet.

Ginny pulled frantically at the knob. It wasn't turning. What if she needed a key? Horrible thought. She didn't have a key to this door; she'd never seen or even heard of one. The air was shifting and wavering all the time now; in desperation, she pulled a barrette out of her hair and crouched down with some confused idea of trying to pick the lock.

Had the keyhole _grown_? Surely it hadn't been that large before, thought Ginny; it couldn't have been. The hole below the white china knob was like a dark mouth yawning wide, or… or a chamber of secrets waiting to swallow her up. If she bent down and put her eye to it again, she would see… The walls were slanting now, pulling her even further towards the door, as if gravity itself had warped, and she knew without even looking back that the entire corridor was changing around her already. There was only that tiny bit of space around the door. Ginny closed her eyes; it was horribly cowardly and she knew it, but if she opened them and turned her head she'd see _Harry_ and she couldn't open the door, she was stuck on one side and Draco was on the other, she pressed closer and closer to it and a tremendous weight pushed her against it and it still wouldn't open and…

And everything blew open, she tumbled through space, losing all sense of balance; she reached frantically for something but there was nothing to hold onto. A sharp thing reached out and swiped along the length of her thigh, leaving a line of pain behind it. She clutched her leg; as she pulled her knee up, she found herself tumbling through space, falling, landing, sprawling on a hard, flat surface on all fours.

Ginny shook her aching head, trying to clear it. She opened her eyes and looked up.

The room was very dim, but nothing could have disguised the fact that it was rich and sumptuous, a feast for the sense in every detail. A few pools of light spilled onto the floor from orange sconces set high in silk-papered walls. Ginny stared down at the priceless Persian rugs. She lifted up her eyes to see the low inlaid tables with vases of full-blown roses perfuming the air with their heady scent. She saw the subtle glow of wood and silver and leather in the little wet bar to one side. She knew what she would see if she looked round, if the door happened to be cracked open. There would be just a glimpse of a whirlpool bath with gold fixtures. And then, right up against the other wall…

There it was. There was the dark oak four-poster bed with the ruby hangings. The coverlet was twisted up into a mass of dark folds now, and the plump goosedown pillows were bunched up under a head, gathered up under a sinewy arm, and falling across a lean body. And there, at the very center of this bed and this room so carefully built for the express purpose of seduction and sin, lay the sleeping Draco Malfoy. He looked as innocent as Satan before the fall from heaven had even been a glimmer in God's eye.

Ginny walked slowly forward. His face was utterly relaxed, all the sharp lines of strain she remembered smoothed away. His eyelids fluttered lightly. She remembered reading in one of the science books that this was a sign of the sort of sleep that carried dreams. _What does Draco Malfoy dream about, I wonder?_ she thought fleetingly.

But there wasn't time to wonder, or to watch him as he slept. There wasn't a second to lose, and she knew it. Ginny bent down, grabbed both of his shoulders, and shook them as hard as she could. "Malfoy. Wake up!" she hissed, remembering at the last second that Harry might even be close enough to hear them now. _She_ could still hear the strange undertone of a howling, whistling noise on the other side of the door. _Is it getting louder? Getting closer? Fuck. Probably._

For a second, she was sure that he was too deeply asleep to respond at all. Then his mouth twitched. "Mmm?"

"Come on! You've absolutely got to wake up right this second."

He shook his head minutely and burrowed into a pillow. "Mm-mm."

Ginny pulled down the coverlet and saw that he was wearing an undershirt. She was fairly sure that she at least saw boxer shorts a bit further down. _Oh, thank all the gods he isn't sleeping starkers._ Yes. It was relief she felt on seeing that. It _had_ to be relief.

"Malfoy, if you don't wake up…"

He wrapped the pillow completely around his head.

Ginny remembered a particular spot on the neck that Charlie had showed her when she was thirteen years old and they were both watching reruns of that odd Muggle show, _Star Trek_. "There really is such a thing as the Vulcan Nerve Grip, Gin," her brother had explained. "I don't recommend your using it on a bloke unless he's really being bloody annoying, though." Ginny decided that Draco's behavior in the current situation fit the description, if anything ever did. Grimly, she reached out a pinched him.

Draco's entire body jerked. He lifted his head. His eyes were still almost completely closed. "Ow!" he whined.

"Wake _up, _Malfoy!" Ginny said through gritted teeth.

"Can't," mumbled Draco.

"What do you mean, you can't?"

"Can't wake up now. Not till morning." Draco began to slide back into bed.

Something battered at the door. Ginny jumped and landed on Draco's legs. Then she grabbed him and shoved her face an inch from his.

"Listen, Malfoy, you've _got_ to stay awake enough to undo this spell! Astoria cast an Opening spell on this corridor and Harry's turning it back into the Department of Mysteries and he's going to come in here in about one minute and catch us and he's going to send you to Azkaban and we won't even have conjugal visiting privileges, and after fighting with that bitch Astoria for the last hour I won't let that happen, so you'd better just fucking wake up, do you hear me—"

Ginny didn't even know that she was crying until Draco reached up and wiped a tear away from below each of her eyes with his thumbs.

"Banshee," he said tenderly. "Wand?"

"Wand? What do you—oh! Astoria's wand." Ginny broke free and starting scrabbling frantically around on the floor, near the bed. _He didn't call me a banshee tenderly. Nobody could do that. Especially not Dr—Malfoy. I'm having auditory hallucinations. And if I don't find that wand bloody fast, I'll get the chance to have loads of them! There's not much else to do in Azkaban._ Her hand closed on an unpleasantly cold shaft of wood. She handed it to Draco.

He shivered. Then he pointed it towards the door. "_Clauses._"

And then, suddenly, everything was silent.

"It worked," whispered Ginny. "Didn't it?"

"Yes," said Draco. He looked down at Astoria's wand. "Ugh." With one quick movement, he threw it on the floor and away from him. It rolled under the door and disappeared.

_Oh, that can't be good,_ thought Ginny. _But it's too late now._ She reached under the bed again, feeling round, and felt her own wand. A wave of relief went through her. She sat back against the headboard, propping herself up.

"So what the fuck do we do now, Malfoy?" she sighed.

He opened one eye and looked at her briefly. "Sleep," he said, in a very slurred voice.

"But we have to get out of here."

"Can't. I meant it," he mumbled.

"I don't care what you meant," said Ginny, suppressing a distinct feeling of guilt. Draco looked horribly exhausted. But they had to get the hell off this bed and find a way out, now that the threat of Harry and the Department of Mysteries had been eliminated. She tried to push Draco away; he had somehow ended up right in front of her. "Come on, Malfoy. We've got to—"

"Sleep," said Draco. "We've got to sleep. Sleep with me, Ginny." Then he suddenly slumped against her, and his full weight pushed her back down on the bed.

He was on top of her. Lying… _on top_ of her. Every single inch of his body was pressed against hers. She could hear his breathing in her ear, deep and regular. She could feel his hair scratching against her neck. She could even smell _chocolate._

Ginny tried to shift Draco off her immediately, because it was clearly the only thing to do, but he only made a grumpy noise and snuggled into her more deeply. It was simply impossible to move him; he was so profoundly asleep that he was dead weight. Pushing up at his shoulders did absolutely no good; he moved slightly and then just flopped back down again with a contented sort of little grunt. "Urgh!" she said between clenched teeth. From her position underneath him, she had absolutely no leverage, and he felt amazingly heavy for all that he was so thin.

She tried shoving at his ribs. That didn't accomplish anything either, but she was shocked to feel just how little padding there was over his bones. _I think he might be even a bit thinner than the last time I…_ Even to herself, Ginny could not finish the thought. But her brain finished it for her, anyway. _The last time I was so close to him. The last time I felt his body under my hands. It was only a few weeks ago, and he's thinner than he was then. Oh, Draco, what have you been doing? What's happened to you?_

Hastily, she moved downward and tried pushing at his hips. Maybe she could lift him off her…Draco made a little noise in this throat and moved somehow so that his lean hipbones were pressing into her a bit uncomfortably. Instinctively, she shifted her lower body under him, seeking a better position. Oh. _That_ might have been a mistake. She froze. Did she feel something _else_ pressing against her as well? _No! No, I don't. I definitely don't._ Ginny shrank away. But Draco made a pleased sound, and adjusted himself in an even more comfortably disturbing way on top of her. Ginny distinctly felt one large hand begin to steal around the bottom of her bum, pulling her closer still.

_Oh! That's it. I'll bet he's only pretending to be asleep._

With a sudden surge of strength, she shoved Draco off her, rolling him to the side. His closed eyelids didn't even flutter, she saw, and she didn't hear his breathing change. _All right. Maybe he really is asleep, I'll give him that much…_

"Ginny," he said, still not opening his eyes. His hands reached out for her. She stared at the cradle of his open arms.

She had to stay there for the night; they both did. There was no other choice. She couldn't get them out on her own. She didn't even dare to make the attempt. There was nothing to do but to try again in the morning, when Draco was awake and could help her. She didn't know why, but she couldn't wake him up now.

And he was holding his arms out to her.

The last time he had held them out. The last time she had gone into them. (1) _This moment,_ she'd prayed. _Just this moment. Let me have this. It's innocent. It's pure. We're like two children, holding each other. We might never have committed our sins at all._ And then Draco had shoved her under a desk, and Astoria had broken in on them a split second later.

Ginny remembered what she'd done that night, too, as she lay in her solitary bed and stared up at the ceiling. What she'd decided to do.

_Drop by drop, the memories were gone…_

But she knew, if anyone ever did, that memories were never really gone. They stirred and whispered in her mind, crying as sadly as lost children looking for a home.

Draco held his arms out to her in promise of homecoming.

_Tick, tick, tick._ She could hear a clock somewhere. She wondered what time it told. It couldn't be the same as the outside world. This room existed in a pure and perfect bubble, separated from the world of loss and grief and imperfection. The world where she could never even touch the tips of Draco Malfoy's fingers again, nor he hers.

Ginny closed her eyes. Then she fell into the fragile home of Draco's arms, and felt him tighten around her. She couldn't have resisted. She understood that simple fact as soon as she felt the warmth of his body. She closed her eyes, slipping into it, feeling wave after wave of it washing over her. When she pressed herself closer to him, she felt all the sharp bones under the sinewy muscles. _How thin he is,_ she thought sadly. _Maybe I can find some breakfast in the morning…_ Then she stopped, because there would be no morning, not for them. She would be sane again, and he surely wouldn't remember anything about this. And he shifted just so and fitted himself perfectly around her, and none of it mattered anymore, because his body had been shaped to hold hers.

_Just for tonight,_ she thought. _We can never do this again. Of course not. But tonight is mine._ Then Draco's soft breathing in her ear lulled her to sleep, even though she hadn't meant to sleep at all, and although she tried to hide the knowledge from herself, she knew that the night would pass into morning.

**Author notes:** (1) The infamous "desk scene" in Chapter 61.


End file.
